The Chinese government has granted ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent permission to purchase Nvidia H200 chips.

As reported by Reuters, the three companies will be able to purchase more than 400,000 GPUs in total, with other companies now lining up to receive subsequent approvals.

People familiar with the situation told the news outlet that additional purchases would be greenlit, providing certain but as yet undetermined conditions were met, although a separate source claimed that the licenses were too restrictive and, as a result, approvals were not converting to purchases.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that customers in China had placed orders for more than two million H200 chips, far exceeding Nvidia’s supply, which the publication said currently sits around the 700,000 mark.

The Trump administration first granted permission for Nvidia to export the GPUs to “approved customers” in China and other countries under certain conditions in early December, ultimately formalizing the approval earlier this month.

However, the approvals process now comes with a number of provisions that had not been previously announced by the government, and does not permit the export of more powerful chips from the companies.

Under the updated regulations, chips will be tested in third-party labs to verify their technical capabilities before being exported. Exports will also be approved on a case-by-case basis and will not be permitted unless there is “sufficient supply” of the GPUs in the US, with the total number of exports to be capped at less than 50 percent of US customer volume.

Following the announcement, it was reported that the Chinese government has asked tech companies in the country to pause orders for the GPUs while regulators decide the ratio of Chinese-made chips to H200s customers must purchase.