Nvidia's H200 accelerators have begun shipping to Chinese buyers after months of stalled export licences, with ByteDance and Tencent each receiving about 10,000 units. Beijing is directing companies to keep the hardware in Hong Kong rather than mainland China to protect domestic chipmakers, letting mainland teams access the compute remotely over cross-border links. US regulators are now reviewing this offshore-access arrangement, while a May clarification already extended licensing rules to Chinese and Macau-headquartered entities globally. Commercial terms remain unusual, including a reported 25% revenue share to the US government on approved sales, and officials have downplayed shipment volumes to Congress even as the total edges past what was previously called trivial.
