Shifting demand scenarios
What remains unclear is how much demand Chinese firms will actually generate, given Beijing’s recent efforts to steer its tech companies away from US chips.
Charlie Dai, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, said renewed H200 access is likely to have only a modest impact on global supply, as China is prioritizing domestic AI chips and the H200 remains below Nvidia’s latest Blackwell-class systems in performance and appeal.
“While some allocation pressure may emerge, most enterprise customers outside China will see minimal disruption in pricing or lead times over the next few quarters,” Dai added.
Neil Shah, VP for research and partner at Counterpoint Research, agreed that demand may not surge, citing structural shifts in China’s AI ecosystem.
“The Chinese ecosystem is catching up fast, from semi to stack, with models optimized on the silicon and software,” Shah said. Chinese enterprises might think twice before adopting a US AI server stack, he said.
Others caution that even selective demand from China could tighten global allocation at a time when supply of high-end accelerators remains stretched, and data center deployments continue to rise.
