Nvidia CEO says purchase orders and not formal declaration will signal Chinese approval of H200

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday he does ‌not believe China’s government will make a formal declaration ​that it has allowed Chinese firms to import the U.S. company’s H200 chips but that evidence will come through purchase orders.

“My expectation is that we’re not expecting any press releases or any large declarations,” Huang said, after saying that demand for the H200 chips was strong among Chinese customers.

“It’s just going to be ​purchase orders. If the purchase orders come, it’s because they’re ⁠able to place purchase orders,” Huang said during a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. U.S. President Donald Trump last year reversed a ​longstanding ban on shipping advanced artificial ⁠intelligence chips to China, saying he would allow Nvidia to sell the H200, which was the predecessor to its current flagship “Blackwell” chips.

Earlier on Tuesday in an interview with a JPMorgan ‌analyst, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said that the U.S. government ‌is “working feverishly” on license applications for Nvidia to ship its H200 chips to China, but that the ‍company still does not know when they will be approved.

“We’re going to wait and see what will happen,” Kress said of the ‍applications.

At the press conference, Nvidia’s Huang said that the company is ramping up H200 chips for Chinese firms.

“The customer demand is high, quite high,” Huang said. “We’ve fired up our supply chain, and H200s are flowing through the line.”

On Monday, Nvidia showed a sextet of new chips that it said are in full production to form the next “Vera Rubin” generation of its AI computing systems. Kress ⁠declined to say whether Nvidia was facing any specific bottlenecks as it ramps up production but said “we feel ​very solid” about the state of its supply chain.

Nvidia has called for $500 ⁠billion in sales from its current “Blackwell” generation as well as the forthcoming Vera Rubin chips by the end of this year. Kress said there have “already been discussions” about data centre buildouts with customers for 2027 but did not give ⁠sales guidance.