Nvidia H20 GPU exports to China approval reignites demand momentum

TrendForce reports that the U.S. government is likely to lift restrictions on NVIDIA’s H20 GPU exports to China. This policy reversal is expected to boost demand recovery from local AI and CSPs, with the H20 poised to once again become the primary high-end AI chip in the market. The renewed availability of H20 is also anticipated to drive up demand for HBM.

Following the tightened U.S. restrictions on high-end AI chip exports in April, annual shipments of the H20—developed specifically for the Chinese market—were sharply revised downward. Based on recent developments and the possibility that NVIDIA will push to meet its original shipment targets, TrendForce has raised its estimate of China’s procurement ratio for foreign AI chips (mainly from NVIDIA and AMD) to 49%, up from previously projected 42%.

Although companies like Huawei are developing in-house AI chips, their ecosystems are not yet mature enough to fully replace NVIDIA’s advantages in system-level integration, computational efficiency, and supply chain scale. The resumption of H20 shipments is expected to unlock significant pent-up demand for AI infrastructure deployment in China, especially among major CSPs, who are likely to prioritize H20 for building out their own data centers. Additionally, NVIDIA is set to launch a custom version of the RTX PRO 6000 for the Chinese market to support a broader range of edge AI inference applications.

The H20 chips shipped in 2024 primarily use HBM3 8hi, with an upgrade to HBM3e 8hi and increased total capacity expected in early 2025. As China’s domestic ASIC makers face export restrictions on HBM, many of their products still rely on previously sourced HBM2e. As a result, the H20 is likely to gain favor, contributing to a higher share of total HBM consumption.

TrendForce notes that China’s AI market remains vulnerable to geopolitical uncertainty, and risks to NVIDIA persist. If the H20 export ban is indeed lifted, local CSPs and OEMs are expected to stockpile aggressively, while domestic AI chipmakers and ecosystem players—backed by government support—will continue to accelerate their development in parallel.

Source: TrendForce, Taiwan.