Chinese tech giants secured NVIDIA H20 shipments worth billions ahead of US sanctions: report

Before the US announced new sanctions on NVIDIA chips earlier this month, Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance had placed orders totaling $12 billion for NVIDIA’s H20 chip, according to Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asia. Sources say several billion dollars’ worth of the chips had already been shipped to China before the supply disruption caused by the April sanctions. The three firms reportedly secured one million H20 chips. However, it remains unclear whether all of the ordered NVIDIA chips were delivered prior to the sanctions taking full effect. Additionally, Huawei is reportedly capable of producing at least 750,000 Ascend A10C AI chips, helping China amass a significant chip stockpile ahead of full US sanctions. [Nikkei Asia, in Japanese]