Several Chinese buyers have reportedly ordered a chip Beijing may still stop them from receiving.
Nvidia plans to ship small batches by the end of 2026, The Information reported on Aug. 20, citing two Nvidia employees. This is a bid to regain a foothold after CEO Jensen Huang said the company had “largely conceded” China’s AI-chip market to Huawei, not a comeback.
The chip that answers
In May, Nvidia told investors it was effectively shut out of China’s data-center computing market. Its near-term forecast assumed no revenue from that business.
That helps explain the narrower target. Nvidia’s flagship graphics chips are best known for training AI systems; the new chip would handle inference, the moment an already-trained system has to produce an answer.
It uses technology Nvidia licensed non-exclusively from Groq. For China, software changes would let it work with processors available there instead of restricted Nvidia graphics chips. The reporting says that adaptation preserves the chip’s computing power.
The move steers Nvidia into a field where Chinese companies already compete. Baidu and others make inference chips, while Huawei has gained substantial ground in the broader AI-chip market.
Beijing holds the second gate
The China-compatible configuration complies with U.S. export controls. Whether Beijing will permit the sales remains unknown.
Nvidia did not comment, and Reuters could not independently verify the account. The report identifies neither the customers nor the size of their orders, and no delivery has been confirmed.
The next test is whether a chip Washington permits can win space in a market Beijing can still close. Small planned batches are the opening move. The comeback, if it comes, has not begun.