China is planning to allow the country’s top AI companies to buy a limited number of Nvidia’s, opens new tab H200 chips, ​the Information reported on Wednesday, citing two people with direct knowledge ‌of the matter.
Chinese officials have told Alibaba, opens new tab, ByteDance and DeepSeek in recent weeks that they may soon receive permission to buy some H200 chips, the report said.
Shares of Nvidia ​rose 1% after the report.
The chip giant did not immediately respond to ​a Reuters request for comment, nor did the U.S. commerce ⁠department, which oversees exports of advanced AI chips overseas.
China’s commerce ministry also ​did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Alibaba, ByteDance and ​DeepSeek did not respond outside of regular business hours.
The U.S. government has allowed Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips to China, and licensed about 10 Chinese firms to buy the ​chips. However, Chinese officials, keen to nurture domestic suppliers, have withheld approval so ​far.
Reuters reported in March that Nvidia had won Beijing’s approval to sell the chips to China, ‌citing ⁠sources, and around the same time, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also told CNBC that the company had clearance from China.
Beijing is still determining the exact number of Nvidia chips to approve, and it could amount to fewer than 200,000 ​in total, the ​Information said, adding ⁠that was less than half of what the companies requested earlier this year.
Last month, Reuters exclusively reported that Nvidia told ​Chinese clients its new “Vera” central processors for AI data centres ​could be ⁠available as soon as August and that they can begin placing orders.
Nvidia’s market share in China has effectively fallen to zero, Huang said in October, hurt ⁠by U.S. ​export controls and Beijing’s push for self-reliance in ​key technologies.
The potential shift in China’s stance underscores the growing computing capacity crunch that the country’s ​tech companies are facing.

A team of software testers found that Australian social media platforms did not request age proof for any of 50 accounts that declared themselves to be 16, a result that leaves the country’s world-first under-16 ban “ineffective” at the most basic screening stage, according to a study seen by Reuters.

Since December, platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube have been required to bar people under 16 and take “reasonable steps” to verify age, with regulators recommending multiple layered checks. But the new research, conducted by those who advised the nationwide curb, shows that the initial vetting step, which estimates a user’s age from general online activity, is failing to flag young people for tougher verification.
The testers, who last year trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, opened 50 new accounts after the law took effect and set the age as 16. None of the platforms asked for additional proof, the researchers told Reuters. The findings highlight a flaw that has been largely overlooked while public debate has focused on photo-based age-estimation tools.

The ban’s rollout has been widely criticised after surveys indicated that most under-16s still access the platforms. The government last month doubled the maximum fine and warned of possible court action against tech giants, accusing them of setting the system up to fail. Platforms have countered that they are simply following the regulator’s guidance, which prioritises low-friction checks and prevents reliance on government ID alone due to privacy concerns.

Some advisers to the original trial said they had repeatedly warned that the testing process ignored real-world circumvention, including minors entering false birthdates. “We did want to talk about circumvention, but we kept on being told that that wasn’t part of the actual trial,” Colm Gannon of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children told Reuters. A youth digital rights academic involved in a longer-term study of the ban said more impressive results might emerge once platforms move to age-inference methods later in the year. The regulator maintains that the recommended layered approach, if implemented correctly, ensures no single point of failure.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is developing its own artificial intelligence chip, a move that could lessen its dependence on Nvidia and Huawei hardware, according to three people familiar with the matter cited in a recent Reuters report.

The chip is being designed for inference, the stage of AI computing where a trained model generates responses for users, rather than for training new models, explains the report. The project remains at an early stage, with DeepSeek reaching out to external partners and holding discussions with chip-design, foundry, and memory companies, the sources said. The effort began roughly a year ago.

DeepSeek has also quietly stepped up hiring of chip-design engineers in recent months, though it has not posted roles on public platforms, two of the sources added. The company, known for its low-profile approach despite becoming China’s AI standard-bearer, did not respond to a request for comment.

The push marks a strategic shift for a company that has historically prioritised model breakthroughs over commercial expansion. It also follows a broader industry trend: OpenAI last month unveiled its own custom inference chip, while Anthropic has been weighing a similar move, Reuters has previously reported.

For DeepSeek, the incentive is particularly sharp. US export controls bar Chinese firms from buying Nvidia’s most advanced processors, and Beijing has urged its tech champions to build domestic alternatives. DeepSeek has used both Nvidia and Huawei chips in the past, but has increasingly leaned on Huawei’s Ascend line. An in-house chip would give it greater control and potentially lower costs, particularly as inference demand soars.

However, significant hurdles remain. Designing a competitive AI chip typically takes years and heavy investment. Manufacturing is also constrained, as separate US curbs block Chinese companies from accessing the most advanced overseas foundries and high-bandwidth memory, a critical component for inference chips.

News of the effort nudged Nvidia shares down about 2% in premarket trading. The chip push coincides with DeepSeek’s first embrace of outside capital, with the company poised to raise $7 billion in a maiden funding round, Reuters reported last month.