US official confirms Nvidia H200 chips have begun shipping to China under licenses

A senior US official confirmed for the first time that licensed shipments of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China have actually begun. Jeffrey Kessler, the under secretary of commerce for industry and security, told a congressional hearing on July 14, 2026 that a ‘trivial’ number of the chips have reached customers in China under case-by-case export licenses.

Kessler did not disclose quantities or name buyers. His remarks mark the first official confirmation that deliveries have started, months after Washington cleared the door.

The shipments follow President Trump’s December 2025 decision to allow sales of the chip to approved Chinese customers, and a January 2026 Commerce Department rule requiring each license to be reviewed individually. As of May 2026, about 10 Chinese firms had been cleared to buy H200 chips, but no deliveries had taken place.

That is the change: buyers approved on paper are now receiving hardware. The H200 is a high-bandwidth AI accelerator a tier below Nvidia’s flagship Blackwell parts, powerful enough to train and run large models but permitted for export under the current policy.

‘Trivial’ is doing heavy lifting in Kessler’s account, and without volumes or buyer names the scale of the trade is unknowable from the testimony alone. The confirmation is likely to sharpen a fight in Congress, where China hawks argue any advanced-chip flow erodes US leverage, while the administration frames case-by-case licensing as controlled access that keeps Chinese firms tied to American hardware. Whether the ‘trivial’ volume stays small, or the licenses become a wider pipeline, is the number to watch.