DeepSeek’s Success Has Spurred Demand for Nvidia H20 Accelerators in China

Because of US sanctions, Nvidia’s advanced accelerators are banned from being shipped to China, and from that perspective, the performance-stripped H20 accelerators are Nvidia’s most advanced solutions available to Chinese customers. Demand for them in China has increased significantly following the success of DeepSeek, Reuters sources say.

Image source: NVIDIA

Recall that the Chinese startup DeepSeek has demonstrated the ability to create efficient large language models with limited access to hardware resources, so interest in its developments has grown significantly in China itself. According to Reuters, purchases of Nvidia H20 accelerators by Chinese companies Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance have increased significantly after the corresponding revelations about DeepSeek’s breakthrough.

The listed Chinese companies not only use computing power for their own needs, but also provide it to third-party developers. Chinese server hardware manufacturers note that the local market has seen an increase in demand for solutions equipped with H20 accelerators and using DeepSeek language models. Now even representatives of the education and healthcare sectors are purchasing them, although previously such purchases were mainly made by communication providers and successful financial organizations in China. In part, the increase in demand for H20 could have been provoked by rumors about the US intentions to ban the supply of these accelerators to China.

According to analysts, about 1 million H20 accelerators were imported into China in 2024, providing Nvidia with revenue of more than $12 billion. Many Chinese companies, including Tencent and automaker Great Wall Motor, decided to adopt DeepSeek’s developments.