Executive in China buys 200 smuggled NVIDIA H200 and makes video bragging

The smuggling of GPUs to China is not a surprise after the harsh sanctions imposed by the US on the export of products to the country. However, it is not often that we see a businessman openly bragging about purchases he made illegally. And that’s exactly what an unidentified executive does, showing off some of his new NVIDIA H200.

The H100 and H200 cards are among the most advanced NVIDIA has to offer in AI acceleration, which is why shipping them to China is illegal. So, getting one of these cards in the country can be a challenge, but the video host says he purchased a total of 200 NVIDIA H200 GPUs.

The person appears sitting next to a Supermicro server, with eight H200s inside. He would then have purchased 25 of these servers. Not content with bragging about the quantity of products purchased, the executive also makes fun of President-elect Trump.

“On the last video, some friends commented ‘that’s illegal’! It is indeed illegal, but it violates US law”, says the businessman in the video, in free translation. Then, making mocking gestures, he adds “Trump is going to be furious, right?”

In the same video, the executive thanks a friend of his who would be responsible for getting these servers with NVIDIA GPUs. He says this person contributed to the development of AI and large language models in China by getting these products.

No matter how much he brags in the video, the person doesn’t talk about prices. One has to imagine that the investment in eight Supermicro servers with NVIDIA H200 was worth millions, even more so paying extra for smuggling.

Related news:

Tom’s Hardware says that a server fully equipped with these GPUs can cost around US$300,000. Add an extra percentage for trafficking and multiply by 25 and we will have numbers approaching US$ 10 million.