Nvidia is pushing back on a report that it will ship a custom AI chip to Chinese customers by year-end, a mixed signal for investors hoping China sales bounce back.

• A tech news report said Nvidia would start small deliveries of a China-tailored language processor late this year, with some orders already placed.
• Nvidia denies it, saying the report is wrong and no China-specific version of the chip is in its plans.
• The chip in question uses technology licensed from startup Groq and works alongside GPUs to speed up AI chatbot replies.
• Washington cleared Nvidia in May to sell H200 chips to a short list of Chinese firms including Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, but deliveries only began recently.
• Jensen Huang has already said Nvidia has effectively ceded the Chinese AI chip market to Huawei, now its main rival there.

Outlook: China stays a shrinking and politically fragile slice of Nvidia's business, with Huawei gaining ground while export rules keep shifting.