Nvidia giữ lợi thế tại Trung Quốc dù Bắc Kinh cảnh báo chip H20

• Dù Bắc Kinh vừa cảnh báo về “rủi ro an ninh” liên quan chip H20, nhu cầu từ các tập đoàn công nghệ lớn Trung Quốc như ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent và Baidu vẫn rất cao.

• Nvidia chấp nhận trả 15% doanh thu từ chip H20 bán tại Trung Quốc cho chính phủ Mỹ để được phép xuất khẩu. Có kỳ vọng rằng chip Blackwell (phiên bản hạ cấp) cũng sẽ sớm được phép bán.

• Chính phủ Trung Quốc chỉ “khuyên” thay thế bằng chip nội địa (Huawei, Biren, Cambricon) chứ không cấm. Các công ty cho biết chưa nhận chỉ đạo bắt buộc và vẫn dùng H20 cho dự án ngoài hạ tầng trọng yếu.

• Một số doanh nghiệp đánh giá chip Ascend của Huawei “mạnh mẽ” nhưng hiệu suất thấp hơn Nvidia, tỷ lệ lỗi cao và công suất sản xuất hạn chế.

• Tencent khẳng định đã tích trữ đủ GPU cho huấn luyện và nâng cấp mô hình, nhưng nhân viên lo ngại nhu cầu vẫn vượt khả năng dự trữ vì công ty còn cho thuê GPU cho khách hàng ngoài.

• Giá cả cũng là lợi thế: H20 rẻ hơn so với chip nội địa cả về mua sắm lẫn chi phí vận hành, trong khi nền tảng CUDA của Nvidia giúp phần mềm tối ưu hơn.

• Các nhà cung ứng H20 cho biết đơn hàng không giảm sau cảnh báo an ninh của chính phủ Trung Quốc. Doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc buộc phải “đi hai chân”: tiếp tục mua Nvidia đồng thời tăng tỷ lệ dùng chip nội địa.

• Biên lợi nhuận H20 thấp hơn chip Nvidia tiêu chuẩn và còn làm căng thẳng công suất đóng gói tiên tiến CoWoS của TSMC, nhưng giúp Nvidia duy trì thị phần và thể hiện thiện chí với Trung Quốc.

• Mỹ và Trung Quốc vẫn căng thẳng: Washington lo ngại “cửa hậu”, Nvidia bác bỏ. Nhà phân tích Bob O’Donnell cho rằng công ty khó thay thế vì các mô hình AI toàn cầu vẫn cần chip Nvidia.

• Trump có thể cho phép xuất khẩu Blackwell hạ cấp với bộ nhớ GDDR7 thay vì HBM, nhưng chưa rõ điều kiện chia sẻ doanh thu sẽ ra sao.

📌 Nvidia tiếp tục giữ vị thế tại Trung Quốc nhờ nhu cầu lớn với chip H20, dù Bắc Kinh cảnh báo rủi ro an ninh. Các công ty như Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu vẫn ưu tiên GPU Mỹ vì hiệu suất và giá rẻ hơn chip Huawei. Các nhà cung ứng H20 cho biết đơn hàng không giảm sau cảnh báo an ninh của chính phủ Trung Quốc. Doanh nghiệp Trung Quốc buộc phải “đi hai chân”: tiếp tục mua Nvidia đồng thời tăng tỷ lệ dùng chip nội địa. Nvidia chấp nhận chia 15% doanh thu cho Mỹ, đồng thời chuẩn bị chip Blackwell hạ cấp cho thị trường Trung Quốc. Với hệ sinh thái CUDA, Nvidia gần như không thể thay thế trong ngắn hạn.

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/nvidia-s-china-prospects-undimmed-by-beijing-s-h20-worries

Nvidia's China prospects undimmed by Beijing's H20 worries
Many big tech players still prefer US giant's chips over Huawei offerings
20250819 Nvidia china image
U.S. chipmaker Nvidia appears poised to win back market share in China. (Source photos by Ken Kobayashi and AP)
CISSY ZHOU, YIFAN YU and LAULY LI
August 19, 2025 16:24 JST
HONG KONG/PALO ALTO/TAIPEI -- Chinese tech giants' demand for Nvidia's H20 chips remains strong, paving the way for the American AI king to recover market share in the world's second-biggest economy, despite Beijing's recent warnings over "security" concerns, industry sources say.
In exchange for permission to sell its H20 chips to China, Nvidia has agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of revenue generated by those sales, and Chinese tech executives say there are hopes that the chipmaker may even be allowed to sell its more advanced Blackwell products there soon.
A potential wrinkle in those plans arose when the Chinese government recently summoned domestic tech giants including ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu to discuss their use of Nvidia chips and encourage them to use more home-grown options, such as Huawei, Biren and Cambricon Technologies, people familiar with the situation told Nikkei Asia.
Bloomberg first reported last week that Beijing was warning against the use of H20, Nvidia's chip downgraded specifically to be sold in China, in government projects.
The silver lining is that Beijing was not issuing a ban, but rather "advice", on Nvidia chips, while Chinese tech companies' pent up demand for H20 and the upcoming Blackwell chips remains strong, according to industrial sources.
An executive from one leading tech company said it so far has not received any directives to purchase more Chinese chips and it understands the advice is not mandatory, adding that nothing close to a ban of Nvidia has been put forward. The person added that their company informed authorities that its projects involving Nvidia chips are not "critical infrastructure" and that it will continue to use the American chips.
The executive also said that despite some Chinese companies hailing Huawei's Ascend chips as "superior," they are less efficient than Nvidia's and have a higher defect rate than expected, while the chipmaker itself is facing issues with capacity constraints.
Last week, Tencent President Martin Lau said in a post-earnings call that the company has a sufficient stockpile of chips for both AI training and model upgrades after reports that it had been summoned by Beijing. However, multiple staff at the company told Nikkei that they are still concerned the stockpile may not be enough as the company not only needs to keep training its models but also rents GPUs, or graphics processing units, to external users.
Another advantage for Nvidia, perhaps surprisingly, is price.
"H20 is actually cheaper to use than some Chinese alternatives" due to both the procurement cost and running efficiency, one Beijing-based venture capitalist told Nikkei Asia. The strength of Nvidia's CUDA computing platform makes it that much harder to replace even if Huawei and others come close on the hardware level, the source added.
An executive with a supplier of H20 server systems told Nikkei Asia that orders for downgraded Nvidia AI chips have not changed significantly since the Chinese government's warning of the alleged security issues.
"For the Chinese CSP [cloud service providers], they still hope to use higher-efficiency chips to conduct their computing tasks," the executive said. "However, every Chinese CSP has to walk with two legs ... meaning that they will continue to buy chips from Nvidia, but they will also increase their use of homegrown chips." 
The executive, whose company has worked with Nvidia for more than a decade, said the margin on H20 chips is smaller than Nvidia's normal ones and producing them squeezes the capacity of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s advanced chip packaging CoWoS, which is already constrained due to AI infrastructure's exponential demand increases. 
"But being able to continue selling H20s into China is a way to show its goodwill to the Chinese government and hold on to its market share there," the person added.
Multiple state media outlets recently said the H20 poses security risks for China after Beijing raised concerns over backdoor access in those chips. Nvidia has denied that its chips have any backdoor issues.
For now, at least, Nvidia's technological edge means it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully replace.
"Every company or country has recognized the importance of developing their own AI capabilities, and the tools they need to get that work done are Nvidia chips. So they're going to buy Nvidia chips, whether they necessarily want to or not, because it's the only option they have," said Bob O'Donnell, president and chief analyst at Technalysis Research.
"There's definitely politics going on, but I don't think it's going to be an issue [for Nvidia to recover in China]," said Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities.
Nikkei Asia previously reported that Nvidia is preparing a downgraded Blackwell chip, designed for the China market later this year, that will come with GDDR7 memory rather than the more advanced high-bandwidth memory, to comply with U.S. regulations.
Given that such a chip is not yet available in the market and its capability as a downgraded version is not known, Chinese tech companies are adopting a wait and see approach.
It is also unclear if Nvidia would have to pay the U.S. government a similar 15% share of sales -- or possibly even more -- in return for being able to export a downgraded Blackwell to China.
Some are hopeful the Trump administration will further relax export controls to allow Chinese tech companies to procure Blackwell chips, the next generation of the Hopper-infrastructure H20 chips, with fewer restrictions. Trump has said he might make a deal to allow Nvidia to sell downgraded Blackwell chips to China.
"The H20 shows there are always deals to be made with the Trump administration, so maybe there is enough money to be made with selling full-capacity Blackwell to offset any national security concerns Washington may have," said the Beijing-based venture capitalist.
Not everyone is so optimistic.
"I don't think there's the sense that they [Nvidia] necessarily need to" sell full-capacity Blackwell to be competitive in the Chinese market, said O'Donnell. Opposition in Washington, he added, would likely be too strong to allow it anyway.
Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Baidu didn't respond to a request for comment. 
Nvidia reiterated its earlier statements that its chips are secure and that banning sales of the H20 in China would harm U.S. interests.