Commerce Department cleared Nvidia chip sales to questionable Chinese firms, NYT reports

Some approved H200 buyers were reportedly nonexistent, sanctioned, or tied to China's military The US Commerce Department approved Nvidia chip sales to Chinese companies that were nonexistent, sanctioned, or linked to China’s military, according to The New York Times. The report lands as Washington tries to balance two goals. It wants to keep selling American AI hardware abroad. It also wants to keep that hardware away from Beijing’s defense apparatus. The Commerce Department has approved around two dozen Chinese companies to purchase or manage Nvidia’s H200 AI chips. That count stood as of November 2026. Many of the names are household brands in tech and autos. The approved list includes Baidu, BYD, Tesla Shanghai, Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance. The approvals did not arrive all at once.

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