Reuters tallies $3.2 billion of Chinese AI projects on restricted Nvidia chips

The Reuters tally rests on paperwork that is public by design: procurement notices, investment plans, construction contracts and corporate disclosures. That is what makes the finding notable. Nvidia's public position has been that US export controls have "effectively shut it out of the AI data-centre market in the world's second-biggest economy," and Huang said last year the figure had gone from 95% to zero. The same reporting, however, cites an IDC estimate it referenced in October that put Nvidia at 34% of Chinese AI-accelerator shipments in the first half of 2026, a figure that sits awkwardly beside the zero-share line.

The project list shows where the demand is coming from. In coastal Fujian, a proposed 6.2 billion yuan ($873 million) AI computing centre in Xianyou county is seeking commercial partners and specifies Nvidia H100 chips. In Shaanxi, state-owned engineering group Sinomach said a subsidiary won a contract tied to a 3 billion yuan computing centre specifying H100 and H200 processors. In Gansu, a local company was awarded a 1.16 billion yuan construction contract in July for a centre planning approximately 3,072 Nvidia processors, with tender documents listing H100 and H200 hardware. In eastern Jiangsu, the Wuxi municipal government said in March 2025 that a computing cluster using Nvidia H800 processors had entered operation.

The buyers are not the familiar Chinese big-tech names but local governments, a state engineering group and regional computing hubs stretching from the wealthy coast to remote western provinces. The piece landed the same day Senator Scott summoned Huang and Lutnick to Senate Banking, and reporting said Trump-Lutnick ties to Huang slowed Nvidia China export curbs, so the procurement record and the policy fight are now moving on the same timeline.