09/01/2026

FRIDAY | JAN 9, 2026

17

BIZ & FINANCE

Full upfront payment required for H200 chips in China

BOJ maintains rosy economic

view, sees wage hikes continuing

temporarily pause their H200 chip orders as regulators are still deciding how many domestically produced chips each customer will need to buy alongside each H200 order, the second person said. The Information first reported the pause on Wednesday. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday that customer demand for H200 chips was “quite high” and that the company has “fired up our supply chain” to ramp up production. Huang said he did not expect China’s government to make a formal declaration on approval, but “if the purchase orders come, it’s because they’re able to place purchase orders.” The strict payment requirements underscore the delicate balancing act Nvidia faces as it attempts to capitalise on surging Chinese demand while navigating regulatory uncertainty in both countries. Joe Biden’s administration had banned advanced AI chip exports to China, but President Donald Trump reversed that policy last month, allowing H200 sales with a 25% fee to be paid to the US government.

Nvidia has been burned in the past. Last year, it wrote down US$5.5 billion in inventory after the Trump administration abruptly banned it from selling the H20 chip to China, previously the most powerful product it was able to offer there. While the US has reversed that decision, China has since banned H20 shipments. But the payment structure for the H200 effectively transfers financial risk from Nvidia to its customers, who must commit capital without certainty that Beijing will approve the chip imports or that they will be able to deploy the technology as planned. Chinese internet giants including ByteDance and others view the H200 as a significant upgrade over currently available chips. The H200, currently Nvidia’s second-most powerful chip, delivers roughly six times the performance of the H20 that Nvidia had designed specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to fulfill initial orders from existing stock, with the first batch of H200 chips expected to arrive before Chinese New Year. – Reuters

o Nvidia hedging against uncertainty over Beijing’s approval of shipments: Sources

TOKYO: The Bank of Japan (BOJ) said yesterday the country’s regional economies were recovering gradually and many firms saw the need to continue raising wages, signalling its optimism over the outlook that could justify raising still-low interest rates further. In a meeting of its regional branch managers, the central bank maintained its economic assessment for all nine regions compared with three months ago, saying they were picking up or recovering gradually. In a summary of surveys by the regional branches, the BOJ also said many firms saw the need to raise wages in fiscal 2026 at around the same pace as 2025, reflecting high corporate profits and a tight labour market. Some regions, however, said smaller firms were fretting that they could struggle to raise wages in fiscal 2026 as much as in 2025, the summary showed. Many regions saw companies continuing to pass on higher input, labour and distribution costs through price hikes with some saying they were considering raising prices to incorporate higher costs from recent yen declines, the summary showed. The assessment underscores the BOJ’s growing conviction that the Japanese economy is weathering the hit from higher US tariffs, and seeing a cycle of rising wages and inflation that would justify further rate hikes. “While some regions said exports and output were weakening due to the impact of US tariffs and intensifying competition from Asian companies, others said firms were enjoying solid orders reflecting increasing global demand mainly for artificial intelligence-related goods,” the summary said. The information from the BOJ’s regional branches will be taken into account when the board reviews its quarterly growth and inflation outlook at its next policy meeting on Jan 22 and 23. Many analysts expect the BOJ to keep rates steady this month. Many regions said the impact on domestic demand from China’s restrictions on travel to Japan following a fallout over comments about Taiwan had been limited, though some firms were worried the negative impact could broaden, the summary showed. The central bank raised its policy rate to a 30-year high of 0.75% from 0.5% last month, taking another landmark step in ending decades of huge monetary support and near zero borrowing costs. Despite the move, Japan’s real borrowing costs remain deeply negative with consumer inflation exceeding the BOJ’s 2% target for nearly four years. A summary of opinions at the December meeting showed some board members fretting about the inflationary impact from a weak yen, which pushes up the cost of imports. – Reuters

SHANGHAI: Nvidia is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese customers seeking its H200 artificial intelligence chips, hedging it against ongoing uncertainty over Beijing’s approval of the shipments, said two people briefed on the matter. The US chipmaker has imposed unusually stringent terms requiring full payment for orders with no options to cancel, ask for refunds or change configurations after placement, the people said. In special circumstances, clients may provide commercial insurance or asset collateral as an alternative to cash payment, one of the people added. Nvidia’s standard terms for Chinese clients have previously included advance payment requirements, but they were sometimes allowed to place a deposit rather than make a full payment upfront, the person said.

But for the H200, the company has been particularly strict in enforcing conditions given the lack of clarity on whether Chinese regulators would greenlight the shipments, the person added. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not public. The stepped-up policy enforcement has not been reported previously. Chinese technology firms have placed orders for more than two million H200 chips that are priced at around US$27,000 each, Reuters reported last month, exceeding its inventory of 700,000 of the chips. While Chinese chipmakers like Huawei have developed AI processors including the Ascend 910C, their performance still lags behind Nvidia’s H200 for large-scale training of advanced AI models. Beijing in recent days asked some Chinese tech companies to

Farmers enter Paris on tractors in protest against trade deal PARIS: French farmers rolled into Paris on tractors yesterday morning in a show of dissent against a free trade deal they fear will create unfair competition. One of them bore the message “No To Mercosur”, referring to a free trade deal with four South American nations. Bertrand Venteau told AFP that the farmers intended to peacefully demonstrate at symbolic Parisian sites, even if it meant they ended up in police custody. Tractors are parked in front of the Arc de Triomphe during a nationwide day of protests and actions called by several farmers unions to push the French government to block the Mercosur trade deal. – AFPPIC

dermatitis, a bovine sickness widely known as lumpy skin disease. At the end of last month, President Emmanuel Macron met farmers to discuss the trade pact and the cull. During earlier protests, farmer blocked roads, sprayed manure and dumped garbage in front of government offices to force the authorities to review their policy. Belgian farmers have also staged mass protests against the trade deal, rolling some 1,000 tractors into Brussels in December. – AFP

The EU-Mercosur deal would create the world’s biggest free-trade area and help the 27-nation bloc to export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America. But farmers fear being undercut by a flow of cheaper goods from agricultural giant Brazil and its neighbours. Rural Confederation president

In another protest near the southwestern city of Bordeaux, about 40 farm vehicles blocked access to a fuel depot, according to the local authorities. As well as the trade deal, the farmers are also upset over a government decision to cull cows in response to the spread of nodular

Dozens of tractors arrived before dawn and cruised through Paris, with some reaching the Eiffel Tower and others at the Arc de Triomphe, in a protest organised by the Rural Confederation union. “We said we’d come up to Paris – here we are,” said Ludovic Ducloux, co-head of one of the union’s chapters.