US government is 'working feverishly' on Nvidia licenses for China, ship date still unknown

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (Reuters) - The United States government is "working feverishly" on license applications for Nvidia to ship its H200 chips to China, but the company still does not know when they will be approved, Nvidia's chief financial officer said on Tuesday.

In an interview with a JPMorgan analyst at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said that the company is seeing strong demand for its H200 chips from China after President Donald Trump reversed a longstanding ban on sending the chips to China last year.

"We're going to wait and see what will happen," Kress said of the applications. Reuters has previously reported that Chinese officials are weighing whether to allow the Nvidia shipments, and Kress did not comment on any Nvidia interactions with Chinese officials.

On Monday, Nvidia showed a sextet of new chips that it said are in full production to form the next "Vera Rubin" generation of its AI computing systems. Kress declined to say whether Nvidia was facing any specific bottlenecks as it ramps up production but said "we feel very solid" about the state of its supply chain.

Nvidia has called for $500 billion in sales from its current "Blackwell" generation as well as the forthcoming Vera Rubin chips by the end of this year. Kress said there have "already been discussions" about data center buildouts with customers for 2027 but did not give sales guidance.