A Chinese university under a Pentagon blacklist bought two of Nvidia's newest China-bound chips in October1. Reuters traced the purchase to a domestic reseller, Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, rather than to Nvidia itself. Northwestern Polytechnical University belongs to the "Seven Sons of National Defense," a group of Chinese schools with deep ties to Beijing's military research.
That sale stands apart from the pattern. It still carries a warning for any compliance team reading this today. Check every Chinese buyer against the Entity List before the next shipment moves.
Nine months after Washington's first approval, Nvidia's own books still show something stark. The H200 licensing program has booked $0 in revenue2.
Nvidia's total China and Hong Kong revenue tells a related story. It fell from $9.66 billion to $4.55 billion, the same fiscal quarter one year apart. Six hundred thousand more chips sit crated in Hong Kong, and Beijing has withheld the customs clearance that would let them cross.
Nvidia's China Revenue Fell 53 Percent in a Year
Revenue Nvidia booked to customers headquartered in China and Hong Kong, same fiscal quarter one year apart
Each column is one quarter's revenue from China and Hong Kong customers; the second column covers the quarter one year after the first, once Washington's chip ban and partial reopening both hit.
The figure covers all of Nvidia's revenue from China and Hong Kong customers, a wider measure than H200 sales alone; Nvidia counts it by customer headquarters, apart from where a chip ships.
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [2]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Q1 FY2026 | $9.66B |
| Q1 FY2027 | $4.55B |
The License Washington Wrote
President Trump announced the policy on Truth Social on Dec. 9, 20253. "The United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China," he wrote, adding that "25% will be paid to the United States of America."
Commerce published the rule on Jan. 15, 2026, five weeks after Trump's post. The Bureau of Industry and Security wrote the change into a new rule4. It would review H200 and AMD's MI325X chips for China case by case, instead of denying them outright. "Permitting the sale of the H200 to China under controlled conditions will strengthen the American technology ecosystem," said Jeffrey Kessler, the bureau's under secretary for industry and security.
Trump called the 25 percent a payment. The rule calls it something else.
Nvidia's chips are built outside the United States. To reach China, Commerce first routes each one through a U.S. lab for inspection. That routing counts as an import, and Commerce charges a 25 percent tariff the moment it happens5.
That same word shows up in Nvidia's own filing. "Any H200 shipped under the new licensing program will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States," Nvidia told the SEC in May2. A tariff and a revenue cut sound alike from a podium. They read as different line items to the broker who has to collect one of them.
Nvidia got its first license Feb. 26, 2026, and could ship small volumes to named Chinese buyers6. Three weeks later, at Nvidia's GTC conference, Jensen Huang said the order book was real. "We have received purchase orders, and we're in the process of restarting our manufacturing," Nvidia's chief executive told reporters7.
Washington cleared roughly ten more buyers by mid-May, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com among them, each capped at 75,000 chips8. Commerce kept that list unchanged for months afterward.
Nvidia's China Chip Timeline Ends With 600,000 Chips Stranded in Hong Kong
Dated steps in Washington's H200-to-China license, Dec. 9, 2025 to Nov. 11, 2026
Each pin marks one dated step in the license's life; the magenta pins mark the two findings that show the chips barely moving even after approval.
Dates mark when each development was reported or took effect; Nvidia itself confirmed only some of these details directly.
Sources: BNN Bloomberg [1]; The Register [3]; Bureau of Industry and Security [4]; Bloomberg [6]; CNBC [7]; BNN Bloomberg [8]; Yahoo Finance [10]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Dec. 9, 2025 | Trump announces 25% cut. Trump says Washington will allow H200 sales to China for a cut of the revenue |
| Jan. 15, 2026 | BIS rule takes effect. Case-by-case review replaces denial, with a 25% import tariff and a 50% volume cap |
| Feb. 26, 2026 | First licenses granted. Nvidia can ship small volumes to named China-based buyers |
| March 17, 2026 | Huang reports orders. Nvidia says it has restarted H200 manufacturing for China |
| May 14, 2026 | 10 firms cleared. Each capped at 75,000 chips, a cap that sat unused for months |
| Nov. 5, 2026 | 600,000 chips stranded. Reuters finds chips logjammed in Hong Kong awaiting Beijing customs |
| Nov. 11, 2026 | University buys 2 chips. Reuters finds a blacklisted school bought H200s through a reseller |
Where the Missing Chips Went
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explained the stall bluntly in April. "We have not sold them chips as of yet," he said9. He went further weeks later: "The Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they're trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry."
Beijing's own reluctance shows up in the numbers. Reuters reported on Nov. 5 that about 600,000 H200 chips sit in Hong Kong warehouses, logged and waiting10. Chinese customs withholds large-volume clearance into the mainland.
Dan Nystedt@dnystedtAbout 600,000 Nvidia H200 AI chips are logjammed in Hong Kong awaiting official approval for entry into China, Reuters reports, sending H200 AI server prices skyrocketing as AI firms clamor for computing power: An eight-card H200 server fetched 6 million yuan (US$900,000) in…
Several of China's biggest internet firms have each received only about 10,000 chips through approved channels in recent months. That is a fraction of their licensed allowance.
Scarcity set its own price. An eight-GPU H200 server fetched more than 6 million yuan, roughly $900,000, in China by late October. That price ran about three times what the same machine cost a year earlier.
Scarcity pulled the university toward a reseller. It also leased H200 computing power through five rental deals with Chinese firms1. Those deals gave it a second route around Nvidia's own sales desk. Nvidia, the school and the bureau all declined to answer Reuters's questions.
Who's Right About the Risk
Washington built this license on a bet that a controlled sale beats an uncontrolled one. Kessler framed the policy as evolution rather than retreat4. The administration points to the inspection, the volume cap and the know-your-customer rules it wrote into the license5.
Rep. Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argues the opposite. "Make no mistake: If China buys a chip, they are buying it so they can take it from an American company," he told reporters in January12.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a related case straight to Lutnick. She and six Senate colleagues wrote that the decision "represents a significant departure from longstanding bipartisan efforts to ensure that U.S. technology does not turbocharge China's military and technological capabilities"13.
Nine months of near-stalled sales undercuts the urgency on both sides. Hawks warned of a flood. What arrived first was a trickle, and it reached a blacklisted school through a reseller instead of a government waiver.
The administration promised a reopened market. Nvidia's own books still show $0 booked.
Both predictions missed the shape of what actually happened. The buyer who broke the rule was a sanctioned university paying a reseller for two chips. That is a far smaller risk than any cleared tech giant moving volume through its 75,000-chip license. The gap is proof a leak can matter long before a flood does.
What to do
A company that ships, insures or finances anything bound for a Chinese buyer should check that buyer first. Run the name against the Entity List before the order moves. Nvidia's own approved customers passed a license check, and a sanctioned school still ended up one reseller away from an H200.
Compliance teams watching this license should track two separate numbers. Commerce's own cleared-chip count is one. Nvidia's self-reported shipment count is the other. The gap between them is where resellers operate.
Treat the 25 percent charge as a tariff on your own import paperwork. It is a recurring customs line that lands at the border, rather than a one-time government cut negotiated away at the top. Commerce collects it before a single chip reaches China.
By the numbers
- $0: revenue Nvidia has booked from its H200 China licensing program through the quarter that ended April 26, 20262.
- 25 percent: the tariff Washington charges when an H200 chip passes through a U.S. lab before heading to China2.
- 600,000: H200 chips Reuters found sitting in Hong Kong warehouses awaiting Chinese customs clearance in early November 202610.
- 75,000: the chip cap on each of the roughly ten Chinese buyers Commerce cleared by mid-May 20268.
- 10,000: H200 chips each of several major Chinese internet firms have received through approved channels, Reuters reported10.
- $900,000: the price an eight-GPU H200 server fetched in China by late October 2026, three times its price a year earlier10.
- 2: H200 chips the blacklisted Northwestern Polytechnical University bought from a domestic reseller in October 20261.
What to watch
Beijing's customs stamp matters more than Washington's next license update. Large-volume clearance into the mainland would move this story faster than any new rule out of Commerce. Nvidia's next quarterly filing deserves a close read too, for the first dollar of real H200-to-China revenue. A second case such as Northwestern Polytechnical's would turn one incident into evidence of a pattern.
Sources
- "Military-linked Chinese university bought Nvidia chips despite US blacklist: Reuters exclusive," BNN Bloomberg, Nov. 11, 2026, https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/artificial-intelligence/2026/11/11/military-linked-chinese-university-bought-nvidia-chips-despite-us-blacklist-reuters-exclusive/
- NVIDIA Corporation, "Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended April 26, 2026," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, May 20, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001045810/000104581026000052/nvda-20260426.htm
- "Trump says Nvidia can sell H200s to China – if Washington gets a 25 percent cut," The Register, Dec. 9, 2025, https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/trump_gpu_export_ban_reversal/
- "Department of Commerce Revises License Review Policy for Semiconductors Exported to China," Bureau of Industry and Security, Jan. 13, 2026, https://www.bis.gov/press-release/department-commerce-revises-license-review-policy-semiconductors-exported-china
- "U.S. Commerce Department Revises License Review Policy for Exports of Certain Advanced Computing Commodities to China and Macau," Covington & Burling LLP, Jan. 20, 2026, https://www.cov.com/en/news-and-insights/insights/2026/01/us-commerce-department-revises-license-review-policy-for-exports-of-certain-advanced-computing-commodities-to-china-and-macau
- "Nvidia Gets US License for Small Amount of H200 Exports to China," Bloomberg, Feb. 26, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-26/nvidia-gets-us-license-for-small-amount-of-h200-exports-to-china
- "Jensen Huang says Nvidia has received orders from China and is 'restarting our manufacturing,'" CNBC, March 17, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/17/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-says-chipmaker-has-received-orders-from-china.html
- "US clears H200 chip sales to 10 China firms as Nvidia CEO looks for breakthrough," BNN Bloomberg, May 14, 2026, https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/05/14/us-clears-h200-chip-sales-to-10-china-firms-as-nvidia-ceo-looks-for-breakthrough/
- "U.S. Commerce Secretary says Nvidia still hasn't sold any H200 AI GPUs to China," Yahoo Finance, April 23, 2026, https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/u-commerce-secretary-says-nvidia-104000544.html
- "Nvidia chips stockpile in Hong Kong awaits China import approval," Yahoo Finance, Nov. 5, 2026, https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-chips-stockpile-hong-kong-120548918.html
- Dan Nystedt, post on X about the Hong Kong H200 stockpile, Nov. 6, 2026, https://x.com/dnystedt/status/2118508042497228953
- Edward Graham, "Lawmakers worry over new rule that will allow sales of Nvidia's H200 chips to China," Nextgov/FCW, Jan. 14, 2026, https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2026/01/lawmakers-worry-over-new-rule-will-allow-sales-nvidias-h200-chips-china/410696/
- U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (Minority), "Warren, Schumer, Colleagues Press Lutnick on Administration's Decision to Sell Out U.S. National and Economic Security by Greenlighting the Sale of H200 Chips to China," Dec. 12, 2025, https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-schumer-colleagues-press-lutnick-on-administrations-decision-to-sell-out-us-national-and-economic-security-by-greenlighting-the-sale-of-h200-chips-to-china
