Nvidia denies report it will ship Groq-based LPUs to China by year-end — says there is ‘no China-specific LPU product in our roadmap’

Nvidia has rejected a report claiming that it plans to begin small-batch shipments of a language processing unit tailored for Chinese customers by the end of 2026, with several Chinese orders already placed. “The reporting in The Information on NVIDIA’s LPU is incorrect. We have no LPU sales in the China market today, and no China-specific LPU product in our roadmap,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware on Thursday. The Information’s story, which cited two Nvidia employees, said the chip is a variant of the Groq 3 LPU Nvidia announced at GTC in March, and that its silicon is unchanged because it already falls within U.S. export rules.

The LPU was designed as a decode co-processor for the Vera Rubin platform, and Vera Rubin can’t be sold in China. The Information’s sources said Nvidia rewrote the software that splits work between the GPU and the LPU so the accelerator can run alongside processors that are available in the country.