Nvidia is pitching its Vera CPU to Chinese buyers, testing whether a CPU sale can fit through the gap that export controls punched through its GPU business.
Reuters, citing three people familiar with the talks, reported that orders are open now and deliveries could begin as soon as August. The Vera CPU is part of Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform, an architecture designed to pair the CPU with high-end Rubin GPU accelerators. Selling the CPU independently may not trigger the same restrictions that have effectively blocked Nvidia's AI training chips from Chinese customers. Jensen Huang has acknowledged the damage those controls inflicted on Nvidia's China revenue, which the company has described as a collapse.
CPUs face lighter export scrutiny than GPU accelerators, which Washington targeted specifically as AI-enabling hardware, so Vera may represent a product line that genuinely fits within current rules rather than stressing them. The side effect, if it works, is that Nvidia stays commercially present in China - maintaining supplier relationships while it waits to see how the controls evolve.
Nvidia has run this play before: the A800 and H800 were engineered as China-legal alternatives to the A100 and H100, until regulators updated the rules and closed that path. Vera might be a durable opening, or it might be next year's example of a loophole getting shut.