Washington has opened another narrow channel for advanced AI chips to reach China, but Beijing still controls whether the hardware gets through.
US officials have approved export licenses allowing a ZTE subsidiary and two other Chinese companies to purchase advanced processors from Nvidia and AMD, according to documents and sources reviewed by Reuters. The approvals expand the group of Chinese businesses eligible for restricted US chips without dismantling the broader export-control regime.
The licenses are only one half of the transaction. Chinese authorities have also restricted incoming chip shipments, leaving the companies caught between the technology policies of the world’s two largest economies.
ZTE and Maginfra get H200 clearance
According to Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter and documents it reviewed, three additional Chinese companies have been cleared to legally access Nvidia H200 chips after the US took a lighter approach to its high-end chip ban. The restrictions were eased in December, enabling Nvidia to begin preparations with Chinese partners for exporting the H200.
The companies approved to buy Nvidia’s H200 GPUs include a subsidiary of telecom equipment maker ZTE and server manufacturer Maginfra. A third company, Zhuhai Hengqin Yunxiang Zhisheng Network Technology, a Kingsoft Cloud subsidiary, was cleared to use some AMD chips that rival the H200.
Beijing still controls the next step
The approvals do not guarantee the chips will reach Chinese customers anytime soon.
Beijing, too, has imposed its own restrictions, halting some shipments from entering China even after Washington granted export licenses. However, the country recently notified top AI firms that they may be allowed to buy limited amounts of the chips.
At the same time, US restrictions have accelerated China's investment in domestic AI hardware, with companies increasingly relying on homegrown alternatives.
That shift has already reshaped the market, with Huawei expanding and taking over Nvidia’s share of China’s chip market.
AI hardware remains a strategic asset
The latest approvals illustrate that advanced AI processors have become more than commercial products.
They are increasingly used as strategic tools in the broader technology rivalry between the US and China, with both governments deciding not only who can build the most capable AI systems but also which companies gain access to the computing power that powers them.
For Nvidia and AMD, limited export approvals reopen part of a billion-dollar market that had largely been closed by US restrictions. For the three Chinese firms, however, immediate access to American AI chips remains uncertain, with policy decisions in both Washington and Beijing making future supplies as much a diplomatic question as a commercial one.
The development goes beyond Nvidia and AMD.
Cloud providers, software developers, telecom operators, AI startups, and robotics companies all depend on access to high-performance compute to train and run AI models. That means these export decisions can ripple across innovation, investment, and competition in the wider technology sector.
Also read: China’s optical chip breakthrough could make AI inference faster by moving data between chips with light instead of relying only on larger GPU clusters.