Nvidia H200 AI chip sales to China remain stalled despite regulatory approvals issued.

Nearly three months after the Trump administration reversed its export ban in early December, allowing Nvidia to sell its H200 accelerators to Chinese customers in exchange for a 25 percent cut of the revenue, the GPU giant remains in limbo. While small amounts of H200 products for China-based customers were approved by the U.S. government, CFO Colette Kress stated that "we have yet to generate any revenue, and we do not know whether any imports will be allowed into China." The company's Q1 2027 revenue forecast notably does not account for a single cent of Chinese datacenter revenues, as Beijing has not granted its blessing despite Washington's willingness to permit the 2023-vintage chip sales.

In discussions with analysts, Kress emphasized the risks of technological decoupling, warning that "our competitors in China, bolstered by recent IPOs, are making progress and have the potential to disrupt the structure of the global AI industry over the long term." She stressed that to sustain leadership in AI, "America must engage every developer and be the platform of choice for every commercial business, including those in China." These concerns align with those raised by rival AMD and partners including Microsoft, Coreweave, and OpenAI.

CEO Jensen Huang addressed the emerging opportunity in orbital datacenters, noting both the challenges and potential applications of deploying GPUs in space. While acknowledging that "the economics of space-based datacenters are poor" at present, he argued that conditions will improve over time. Huang identified imaging as one of the best use cases for GPUs in space, explaining that "to be able to do imaging at very large, very high resolutions, extremely large scales and very, very fast, it's easier just to do it out in space" rather than sending petabytes of data back to Earth. Despite Gartner analyst Bill Ray describing the orbital datacenter industry as experiencing "peak insanity," other companies including Google and Amazon continue exploring space-based computing infrastructure.

Looking ahead, Nvidia expects to rake in $78 billion, give or take two percent, during Q1 2027, representing nearly 90 percent year-over-year revenue growth as it capitalizes on demand from hyperscale customers. Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft expect to plow a collective $635 billion into datacenters and AI infrastructure this year alone. This optimistic forecast follows a particularly strong Q4, in which Nvidia's profits topped $42.96 billion on revenues of $68.12 billion, with the datacenter business accounting for more than 90 percent of revenues at $62.3 billion. Other business segments reported significantly smaller contributions: gaming generated $3.7 billion, professional visualization $1.3 billion, and automotive $604 million. For the full 2026 fiscal year, Nvidia achieved a $120 billion profit on revenues of $215.93 billion.