Nvidia’s China ambitions hit another wall this week as DeepSeek’s highly anticipated V4 model landed — and it leaned heavily on Huawei’s hardware, not Nvidia’s.
DeepSeek released preview versions of its V4 model on Friday. The launch was closely watched after its predecessor rattled markets last year with advanced capabilities at a surprisingly low training cost.
This time, Huawei moved quickly to claim the moment. The Chinese tech giant posted on WeChat that its full Ascend AI chip lineup now supports DeepSeek V4 models. DeepSeek did confirm it validated one of V4’s key efficiency techniques on both Nvidia GPUs and Huawei chips — but the primary hardware of choice appears to be domestic.
That’s a problem for Nvidia, which has been locked out of China’s top-tier AI chip market due to US export restrictions.
CEO Jensen Huang said last month that Nvidia had restarted manufacturing of its H200 processors for potential sale in China, and that orders had come in from multiple customers. But Reuters reported this week that not a single H200 chip has actually shipped to a Chinese buyer.
The Trump administration formally approved H200 sales to China, but the deal has hit a wall. Disagreements between Washington and Beijing over the exact terms of the sales have delayed shipments, according to Reuters sources.
Buyers on the Chinese side are also struggling to get clearance from their own government to proceed with purchases.
The numbers at stake are not small. Huang has said China’s AI infrastructure market is worth $50 billion a year and growing at 50% annually.
KeyBanc analyst John Vinh estimates that if sales were permitted at scale, Chinese companies would be willing to buy around 1.5 million H200 chips this year. That would translate to roughly $30 billion in revenue for Nvidia.
Right now, that number sits at zero.
Nvidia’s stock was down 1.41% on the day, though it had nudged up 0.8% in Friday’s premarket session before the Reuters report on the stalled H200 sales landed.
DeepSeek’s V4 release adds a new layer of pressure. If Chinese AI developers continue building on Huawei’s Ascend platform, Nvidia’s window in that market could narrow further — even if the trade and regulatory issues get resolved.
The H200 chips remain manufactured and ready. Whether they ever reach Chinese customers depends on talks that, for now, appear to be going nowhere fast.
As of Friday, Nvidia has confirmed no H200 sales to Chinese buyers, with Reuters reporting shipment delays due to unresolved disagreements between the US and Chinese governments on sale conditions.
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