600,000 Nvidia H200s wait in Hong Kong while Cambricon misses its quarter
Reuters has sized Beijing's hold for the first time: 600,000 Nvidia H200s parked in Hong Kong and gray-market servers at triple last year's price. Cambricon, the listed proxy for forced substitution, just missed its quarter because it cannot make chips fast enough.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Beijing is metering chips Washington already cleared
About 600,000 of Nvidia's+6.24% — Nvidia, up 6.24 percent today H200 AI chips are sitting in Hong Kong warehouses awaiting import approval Beijing has not given, Reuters reported on November 5, citing two people familiar with the matter; the stockpile's size had not been reported before 1. Washington licensed the sales, reviewing export applications case by case since January 13 2. Beijing lets through a trickle: several large Chinese internet firms have each received about 10,000 H200s in recent months, and total foreign-chip approvals may land below 200,000, a figure the US publication The Information reported in July 1.
The Inference reported in September that Beijing was installing a meter on Nvidia's China sales rather than reopening a spigot. The meter now has readings.
The gray market prices what the meter withholds
An eight-chip H200 server was offered for more than 6 million yuan, about $900,000, in mainland China by end-October, roughly three times a year earlier, and servers built on Blackwell chips, which Washington bars outright, fetched more than 20 million yuan 1. Nvidia's filing for the quarter ended July 26 books licensed H200 sales at under 1% of data-center revenue, a $0.4 billion charge on excess stock, and a company that calls itself effectively foreclosed from China's data-center market 23.
Gray-market H200 servers ask triple a year earlier; barred Blackwell kits ask 20 million yuan
- Asking price per eight-chip server
- Estimate
Data
| Asking price per eight-chip server | |
|---|---|
| H200, a year earlier (estimate) | RMB 2M |
| H200, end-October | RMB 6M |
| Blackwell, end-October | RMB 20M |
The domestic substitute cannot ship fast enough
The hold steers Alibaba−0.02% — Alibaba, down 0.02 percent today, ByteDance, Tencent and DeepSeek toward domestic silicon, especially inference, the work of running trained models, which is Cambricon's lane 3. The Shanghai-listed designer posted 2025 revenue of RMB 6.497 billion, up 453%, and its first annual profit, RMB 2.059 billion, on a market value near RMB 483 billion 4.
The queue cannot hand over demand that cannot be manufactured: third-quarter revenue of RMB 3.531 billion fell far short of the RMB 6.26 billion analysts expected, as a shortage of high-bandwidth memory and limited capacity at SMIC, China's top foundry, held back shipments 5. Inventory climbed to RMB 11.665 billion by end-September 6, and the shares have roughly halved since their June record 5.
Domestic AI card shipments, China 2025: Huawei at 812,000, Cambricon and Kunlunxin tied at 116,000
Cambricon and Kunlunxin each shipped 116,000 cards in 2025, one-seventh of Huawei
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Huawei Ascend | 812k |
| Alibaba T-Head | 265k |
| Cambricon | 116k |
| Kunlunxin | 116k |
Cambricon's windfall rests on a reversible decision
For Cambricon, the import hold works as demand protection, and it is protection a customs office can withdraw. The same scarcity is repricing the bench behind it: Kunlunxin, Baidu's+2.01% — Baidu, up 2.01 percent today controlled chip unit, carries a rumored $50 billion Hong Kong IPO target against Baidu's own $26.2 billion market value, and prospective investors have reportedly been asked to buy chips worth three to seven times their intended share allocation; Baidu calls the rumors untrue 47.
Huawei shipped about 812,000 domestic AI cards in 2025, roughly seven times Cambricon 4. The cloud detour is closing too: Oracle's estimated $7 billion deal to give Tencent up to 100,000 advanced chips through Southeast Asian data centers collapsed under US pressure 8.
One customs decision sets Cambricon's demand line
The number to watch is Cambricon's full-year target of at least RMB 13.5 billion in revenue 56. The customs queue sets the demand; the memory shortage sets the supply.
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More about NVIDIA
NVDA · Fiscal Q2 2027Revenue rose 106% to $96.2B, 92.5% of it from Data Center, “driven by the ramp of our Blackwell Ultra infrastructure”. Gains on equity stakes of $7.8B lifted net income to $59.7B.
Show as a table
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $96.2B |
| Gross margin | 75.0% |
| Operating margin | 66.2% |
| Net income | $59.7B |
| Hyperscale | $48.7B |
| AI clouds & enterprise | $40.3B |
| Data Center | $89.0B |
| Edge Computing | $7.2B |
| Gross profit | $72.1B |
| Cost of revenue | $24.1B |
| Other income | $7.8B |
| Operating income | $63.7B |
| Operating expenses | $8.4B |
| Tax | $11.8B |
| R&D | $7.1B |
| SG&A | $1.4B |
