Nvidia's H20 has returned to the market, but Chinese chips have seen a surge in orders in the past three months.

Author: Qiu Xiaofen

Editor: Su Jianxun

To regain the AI computing power market in China, Jensen Huang, the founder of NVIDIA, is on a significant trip to China.

Jensen Huang's itinerary is packed. Besides visiting government officials, a photo of him with Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, has gone viral on the Internet. On July 16th, he will also attend the China International Supply - Chain Expo. In addition, NVIDIA officially organized a media event for him in China as usual.

Jensen Huang was playing with Huawei's "tri - fold" device at NVIDIA's New Year's thank - you party in early 2025. The picture is from the Internet.

Facing so many officials, customers, and the media, Jensen Huang naturally didn't come empty - handed. On July 15th, during his trip to China, he personally announced to customers that NVIDIA had received assurances from the US government to resume the sales of H20 in China.

Perhaps to avoid the suspicion of clearing inventory, Jensen Huang also said that NVIDIA would launch a new and compatible RTX Pro series of GPUs in the Chinese market.

This is also Jensen Huang's third trip to China in 2025. In the previous two trips, he visited Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and other places, distributed red envelopes to employees, and danced the yangko at the company's annual meeting, hoping to boost the confidence of NVIDIA's Chinese team under the shadow of US bans.

Before Jensen Huang arrived in China, on July 9th, NVIDIA's market value continued to soar, exceeding $4 trillion. In the past, it took NVIDIA 30 years to become a company with a market value of $1 trillion, and then two more years to quadruple its market value.

However, on the other side of the prosperity, while NVIDIA was restricted by the bans, the Chinese chip market had already been surging with undercurrents.

In 2025, domestic chip manufacturers have successively launched alternative products to NVIDIA's H20, such as the third - generation Kunlunxin chip P800, Moore Threads' MTT S80, Huawei Ascend 910C, Cambricon Synaptics 590, etc.

To divide up the cake that fell from NVIDIA's mouth, domestic manufacturers are competing for the Chinese market by reducing product prices, achieving ecological compatibility, and locking in major customers. To capitalize on the momentum, MXIC and Moore Threads have recently sought to go public.

During Computex 2025, Jensen Huang said bluntly that NVIDIA's share in the Chinese AI chip market had dropped from 95% during the export control in 2022 to 50%.

From the ban on sales in April this year to the resumption of supply now, the ban on NVIDIA's H20 chips only lasted for a short three months. The situation in the Chinese market during this market vacuum period has been enough to make NVIDIA across the ocean anxious.

During the three - month vacuum period, domestic chips sold like hotcakes

The H20 is a "compliant and downgraded version" of NVIDIA's H100 series designed according to export control policies. It has significantly reduced computing power, interconnection functions, and bandwidth, but can be used in scenarios such as AI inference and edge computing, with a peak computing power of only 15% of the H100.

Several domestic chip industry insiders told "Intelligent Emergence" that in the first half of this year, the "production capacities of several major domestic chip manufacturers have all been fully booked", and "companies like Kunlunxin and Cambricon have received a large number of orders".

The financial report data also reveals the situation. On April 18th, Cambricon released its Q1 2025 financial report, showing that its quarterly revenue soared by 42.3 times, and it even achieved quarterly profitability for the first time since its listing.

The customers paying for these chips are mainly concentrated in two aspects. One is operators and local intelligent computing centers that are vigorously purchasing domestic chips under the requirement of localization rate. The other is Internet giants. Although Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba had stocked up more than 100,000 chips before the H20 ban, their continuous exploration in AI applications still keeps their computing power demand high.

For a long time, most domestic GPU manufacturers have found it difficult to break into NVIDIA's stronghold in the training market. This requires extremely high chip computing power, connection capabilities, and software ecosystems, which are the results of NVIDIA's more than a decade of in - depth development.

It's not a wise move to directly confront NVIDIA's strengths. In contrast, the threshold for large - model inference is not very high, so most manufacturers prefer to start from inference and break through NVIDIA's iron curtain from the bottom up.

Domestic GPU manufacturers are seizing the opportunity of the past three - month vacuum period to target the H20. The founder of a domestic chip manufacturer said that in order to capture NVIDIA's market, there are basically several key product layout directions:

For example, emphasizing that inference chips can be better compatible with models; or increasing the video memory of inference cards to reduce communication pressure and enable them to accommodate larger models; or improving the speed of data transfer to reduce dependence on memory; moreover, emphasizing that the energy - efficiency ratio of inference chips is better than that of the H20.

"There are many alternatives to the H20 in China. Most domestic chips are targeting the H20 in terms of specifications and prices, and this is currently the main competitor for domestic chips," an industry insider analyzed.

Seeking a balance between business and politics

Despite the ongoing international game, China remains a huge market that NVIDIA can't afford to lose. As NVIDIA's fourth - largest market, China contributes about 15% of NVIDIA's global revenue, delivering about $18 billion in annual revenue to NVIDIA.

The spread of bans in recent years has brought huge business losses to NVIDIA. Data shows that the ban on the H20 may cause NVIDIA to lose $8 billion (equivalent to 57.3 billion yuan) in revenue in Q2 2025.

Secondly, there are more than 1.5 million CUDA developers and thousands of enterprises supporting NVIDIA in China, which are the cornerstones of NVIDIA's software empire. Jensen Huang previously defined the Chinese market as "a springboard for NVIDIA's global success."

According to foreign media reports, to seek a turnaround, before coming to China, Jensen Huang specifically met with US President Trump, and the focus of his lobbying hit the sweet spot of the White House policy - makers. In Washington, Jensen Huang emphasized that the good development of NVIDIA would help the US government create jobs, enhance the US AI infrastructure, and strengthen the US domestic manufacturing industry, etc.

Jensen Huang's trip to China to stabilize relationships on all fronts is enough to show NVIDIA's attitude towards the large Chinese market. An industry insider analyzed to "Intelligent Emergence" that the return of the H20 serves two purposes, "it can increase sales data and also target Chinese chip companies."

However, a looming concern is whether the Chinese AI market will turn back to choose NVIDIA chips after the return of the H20?

The aforementioned industry insider analyzed to "Intelligent Emergence" that although the H20 has been downgraded, it still has an absolute advantage in terms of cost - performance and is very suitable for all - in - one machines. However, due to the repeated upgrades of bans in recent years, people's expectations for the long - term international situation are not optimistic. "In the long run, the trend of using domestic chips may be difficult to reverse."

Another industry insider said that domestic chips are also gradually iterating. Although most of them are currently targeting the H20, in the long run, they will benchmark against more powerful products such as the B200 and H100. "Currently, the H20 has certain product advantages, but it is expected to weaken by the end of the year."

For NVIDIA, the key to safeguarding the Chinese market in the future lies in how they can balance politics and business.

Extended reading: "Surrounding NVIDIA | In - Depth Analysis"

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