Nvidia (NVDA.US) H20 chip supply is urgent, China's server leader Xinhua Group 3 sounded an inventory alert

Zhitongcaijing · 03/28 08:49

The Zhitong Finance App learned that a customer notice from China's leading server company Xinhua Group III (H3C) unraveled the crisis of the global AI chip market surging in the global AI chip market. This internal document directly indicates that Nvidia (NVDA.US) H20 chips are facing “major uncertainty in the international supply chain”, inventory is already close to the red line, and it is expected that new batches will not arrive until mid-April. This top AI chip, which is allowed to be sold to China by US export control rules, is facing an unprecedented supply crisis.

The geopolitical haze became a key variable. Xinhua News Agency 3 confessed in the notice that the deterioration of the global trade environment and fluctuations in raw material policies have worsened the already weak supply chain. What is more difficult is that the supply plan after April 20 is still shrouded in multiple uncertainties such as raw material control, logistics interruptions, and production bottlenecks.

The trigger for this chip shortage is the explosive expansion of China's AI industry. Since DeepSeek, an up-and-coming local AI, launched a cost-effective model, tech giants such as Tencent Holdings (00700), Alibaba (09988), Huawei, and Byte have set off a rush to buy H20 chips. An AI server dealer revealed, “We were told that it was in stock, but only discovered that the chip had been resold at a high price when we placed the order.”

Xinhua 3 has launched the “profit first” distribution principle, and long-term stable and high-profit customers will receive priority. This reflects a serious imbalance between supply and demand in the market — the H20 is the most advanced chip sold by Nvidia in China. Since the US upgraded the export ban in 2023, it has become a “single wooden bridge” for Chinese companies to obtain high-end computing power.

Domestic alternatives are breaking through at an accelerated pace. The Huawei Ascend series and Cambrian Smart have launched rival products, but the performance gap has yet to be tested by the market. It is worth noting that at the beginning of the year, US officials considered further tightening H20 exports to China. If this happens, China's AI industry may face more serious challenges.

As Nvidia's main partner in China, Xinhua 3 is jointly carrying the heavy responsibility of China's AI computing power base with manufacturers such as Inspur and Lenovo. According to the data, Nvidia expects H20 shipments to exceed 1 million units in 2024, with corresponding revenue exceeding 12 billion US dollars. In this game of technology, every chip carries a strategic weight.

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