Nvidia pitches Vera CPU to Chinese clients for August delivery

Nvidia Pitches Vera CPUs to Chinese Clients for August Delivery

Nvidia has begun courting Chinese clients with its new Vera CPU, telling companies including Alibaba and ByteDance that orders can be placed now with delivery as early as August, according to a Reuters exclusive report citing three people familiar with the matter.udn

The move marks a fresh attempt by Nvidia to rebuild its presence in China, where CEO Jensen Huang said in October that the company’s market share had “effectively fallen to zero” due to U.S. export controls and Beijing’s push for technological self-reliance.yahoo

A New Entry Point Into China

The Vera is Nvidia’s first standalone CPU designed specifically for agentic AI — autonomous systems that perform tasks without human intervention. Now in full production, the Arm-based chip features 88 custom cores and is designed for the background computing that AI agents rely on, with Nvidia claiming it runs up to 1.8 times faster than comparable x86 processors from rivals.eldestapeweb

Some Chinese clients have already expressed interest in the chip, according to Reuters. A single Vera processor is expected to cost “well north of” $20,000 before bulk discounts, while a fully outfitted rack containing 256 chips could total around $10 million depending on memory configuration, according to SemiAnalysis estimates cited in the report.yahoo

The pitch comes as Nvidia’s H200 shipments to China remain stalled. Although the U.S. cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy the H200 earlier this year, and China gave a green light to ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to purchase over 400,000 units in January, no deliveries have been made. Chinese regulatory approval remains pending.reuters

A $20 Billion Revenue Bet

Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress said during the company’s May earnings call that it expects nearly $20 billion in standalone CPU revenue this fiscal year, a figure that would make Nvidia the world’s leading CPU supplier by revenue, surpassing both AMD and Intel. Huang has described Vera as the company’s “primary growth catalyst,” opening access to a $200 billion total addressable market that he confirmed includes China.yahoo

The sales push also intensifies Nvidia’s competition with AMD and Intel in the server CPU market, where both companies are racing to supply processors for AI data centers. Whether Chinese regulators will permit large-scale purchases remains the critical unknown, as Beijing continues to balance its AI ambitions against a policy of promoting domestic chip development.yahoo