Nvidia Shares Hit Record After U.S. Clears H200 Sales to China

Nvidia shares jumped to a record $236.46 on Thursday after the U.S. Commerce Department approved sales of the company’s H200 AI accelerator to roughly 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com. Lenovo and Foxconn were authorized to act as local distributors.

The approval reverses export restrictions imposed in October 2023 that had blocked Nvidia’s most advanced data-center chips from China. The H200 is Nvidia’s flagship data-center accelerator and the U.S. sign-off restores legal export permission for the device to the named buyers.

China had historically accounted for nearly a quarter of Nvidia’s revenue, with top-tier chip sales reaching about $8 billion annually before the controls. The U.S. clearance does not eliminate the need for Chinese regulatory approvals before shipments can proceed.

No physical deliveries of H200 units have taken place because Beijing is reviewing the individual transactions. The timing of Chinese approvals will determine when Nvidia can recognize sales tied to the U.S. authorization and when the revenue will appear in the company’s data-center results.

The share gain lifted Nvidia’s market capitalization to about $5.52 trillion, a value larger than the gross domestic product of every nation except the United States and China. Alphabet’s market value remained just under $5 trillion.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang described President Trump’s China summit as ‘one of the most important in human history.’ He has repeatedly linked diplomatic developments to the commercial outlook for advanced semiconductor sales.