TrendForce forecasts the U.S. will permit NVIDIA to resume H20 GPU sales in China, a policy shift expected to drive demand recovery among local AI and cloud service providers. The H20 will likely regain its position as the dominant high-end AI chip in this market, simultaneously boosting HBM demand. With NVIDIA poised to accelerate shipments toward its original targets, TrendForce has revised upward its projection for imported AI chips—including those from NVIDIA and AMD—in China's market to 49%, compared with the previous 42% estimate made under export restriction assumptions.

The resumption of H20 supply is anticipated to unleash pent-up deployment demand, particularly as major cloud service providers prioritize these chips for their data center infrastructure builds. NVIDIA is also preparing to launch a specialized RTX PRO 6000 variant for the Chinese market to address diverse needs like edge AI inference.

From an HBM perspective, H20 units shipping in 2024 primarily feature HBM3 8hi, while NVIDIA plans to upgrade to HBM3e 8hi by early 2025, increasing total capacity. Currently, China's domestic ASIC solutions predominantly utilize earlier-procured HBM2e, making the H20 relatively more attractive and elevating its share in HBM consumption.

TrendForce cautions that China's AI market remains vulnerable to geopolitical uncertainties, creating lingering unpredictability for NVIDIA. When H20 exports resume, local clients including CSPs and OEMs are expected to aggressively stockpile inventory. Concurrently, domestic AI suppliers and their ecosystems will likely accelerate development with policy support.