China plans limited Nvidia H200 purchases for top AI firms

China is planning to allow the country's top AI companies to buy a limited number of Nvidia's H200 chips, The Information reported on July 8, 2026. The report cited two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Chinese officials have told Alibaba, ByteDance and DeepSeek in recent weeks that they may soon receive permission to buy some H200 chips, the report said. The U.S. government has allowed Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips to China and licensed about 10 Chinese firms to buy the chips. Beijing is still determining the exact number of Nvidia chips to approve and it could amount to fewer than 200,000 in total. That was less than half of what the companies requested earlier this year, the Information said.