The U.S. government imposed export controls on NVIDIA's H20 chips earlier this month, restricting shipments to China. According to reports from Japanese media, Chinese tech giants ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent purchased around one million H20 chips before the ban, worth billions of dollars.

Insiders revealed that these companies acted preemptively to avoid disruption from the Trump's administration's April chip export cessation, securing almost the entire annual supply and requesting delivery by the end of May, although the actual quantity delivered did not reach the target.

The total value of these urgent orders exceeded $12 billion, with several billion dollars worth of H20 chips shipped before the export restrictions were enacted. ByteDance was one of the most aggressive customers in this deal.

The H20 chip is a product that NVIDIA specifically offers to China under U.S. chip regulations. On July 15, NVIDIA announced indefinite export controls on the H20 chip, requiring a license for exports to China, resulting in a recorded loss of $5.5 billion.

Following the announcement of the H20 export ban, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang visited Beijing on the 17th to meet with Chinese government officials and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, emphasizing the significance of China as a key market for NVIDIA and expressing a desire to continue cooperation.