Nvidia’s H200 chips pile up in Hong Kong as Beijing withholds approval

About 600,000 of Nvidia's advanced AI processors are reportedly waiting at the border while China weighs its reliance on US technology Roughly 600,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips are reportedly sitting in Hong Kong. They are a short trip from mainland China, and they are going nowhere. According to Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, the H200 processors are stuck because Beijing has not approved large-scale imports. Chinese tech companies want the hardware. Their government, for now, does not. A stockpile with nowhere to go The scale of the backlog had not been reported before, according to Reuters. The figure of about 600,000 chips is a big number for a product that sits near the top of Nvidia’s AI lineup. The H200 is among Nvidia’s most capable processors for artificial intelligence work. Chinese internet companies rely on this kind of silicon to build their own AI systems, particularly large language models. Chinese authorities have reportedly halted customs clearance for the H200. The result is an odd standoff where the chips are cleared to leave one side but cannot enter the other. As of July, only a very small number of H200 chips had reached China, ac...