China conditionally approves DeepSeek to buy Nvidia's H200 chips

China has given its top AI startup DeepSeek approval to buy Nvidia's H200 artificial intelligence chips with regulatory conditions that are still being finalised, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.



Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources, that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had been given permission to purchase more than 400,000 H200 chips in total.



Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on Thursday that his company had not received such information. He added that he believed that China was still finalising the licence. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment on DeepSeek's approval.



China's industry and commerce ministries have granted approvals for all four companies, but have stipulated that they will impose conditions that are still being finalised, the sources said. These conditions are being decided by China's state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), according to one of the people.