US officials are considering caps on the number of AI accelerators Nvidia can export to any one Chinese company, which would further constrain the chipmaker’s re-entry into a crucial market.

The Trump administration has talked about limiting Chinese firms to buying 75,000 of Nvidia’s H200 chips each, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shipments of Advanced Micro Devices’ MI325 chips, which have similar capabilities, would also count towards a customer’s cap, the people said.

These accelerators – a prized commodity in the technology world – are used to develop and run artificial intelligence models.

Total shipments to China could still reach as many as a million units, the people said, citing an upper bound Trump’s team set earlier in the regulatory process.

But the lion’s share of current applications comes from a small number of Chinese tech giants, which under per-customer caps could collectively receive hundreds of thousands at most.

The 75,000 limit is less than half of what firms such as Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance privately told Nvidia they would like to buy.

AMD and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees chip export licences, declined to comment.

Nvidia did not respond to a request, while Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond outside normal business hours.

Shares of Nvidia and AMD slipped in late trading on the news.

Nvidia fell almost 1 per cent to a low of US$181, while AMD dropped to US$197.07.

The per-customer restrictions would complicate an already murky picture of when – and to what extent – the world’s most valuable company can return to the largest market for its products.

Nvidia said last week that it still is not getting any data centre revenue from China and does not know whether Beijing will allow imports, even if the US gives permission.

Washington has so far authorised only a small number of H200 exports.

China’s government, which must sign off on any Nvidia sales into the country, is balancing AI developers’ desire for best-in-class American semiconductors against years-long efforts to boost use of Chinese-made chips from the likes of Huawei Technologies.

US President Donald Trump said in December that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had responded positively to the H200 offer and Chinese regulators have told companies to start preparing orders.

Much hinges on Trump’s planned meeting with Xi in a few weeks’ time, when the US president is hoping to strike an agreement for H200 exports to nonmilitary Chinese companies, according to....