Overview
- Nvidia is negotiating with U.S. officials after the administration indicated about two weeks ago it would approve a ByteDance purchase, but the company has not accepted the current Know-Your-Customer requirement and other safeguards.
- The Commerce Department’s January 15 rule shifted to case-by-case licensing with reviews by State, Defense and Energy and requires U.S. third‑party lab testing before shipment.
- Nvidia says it acts as an intermediary on licenses and warns that commercially unworkable conditions would steer Chinese demand to non‑U.S. chip suppliers.
- Chinese buyers are holding off on orders and some H200 suppliers have paused production while licensing terms and security conditions remain unresolved.
- Beijing has issued conditional import approvals for ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and DeepSeek, but those steps have not yet resulted in clear deliveries.