Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Makes Surprise Visit To China

The founder and boss of Nvidia has visited Beijing, just days after the Trump Administration issued fresh export restrictions of the only AI chip the American chip maker was still allowed to sell to China.

Despite this US export restriction, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was quoted by Reuters as saying on Thursday that China was a very important market for Nvidia.

“We hope to continue to cooperate with China,” Huang reportedly said in a meeting with Ren Hongbin, head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

China visit

China welcomes more US companies including Nvidia to further explore the Chinese market, vice premier He Lifeng told Jensen Huang as the two met at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday, state news agency Xinhua reported.

China, with vast potential for investment and consumption, has always been “fertile ground” for investment and trade by foreign enterprises, He Lifeng was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment on Huang’s agenda in China.

Huang’s surprise visit to China was reportedly on the invitation of a trade organisation.

It comes after Nvidia warned earlier this week that it would take $5.5 billion in charges after the US government limited exports of its H20 artificial intelligence chip to China – news which pushed Nvidia’s share price down over 5 percent on Tuesday trading.

Nvidia confirmed that its H20 AI chip, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market to comply with previous US export controls, will now require a special licence to sell in China for the “indefinite future”.

Export controls

The US under the previous Biden Administration had already targeted China with two rounds of export controls in October 2022 and October 2023 that specifically limited the parameters of AI chips that US firms such as Nvidia could sell to Chinese buyers.

For example in October 2022 the US announced its sweeping export controls for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and chips to China, including banning the export of the Nvidia A100 and more powerful H100 chips to mainland China and Hong Kong.

Then in October 2023 the US also banned the export of the slower Nvidia A800 and H800, which had been specifically developed for sale to China.

The United States export restrictions of certain AI chips to China over national security concerns, went into force in April 2024.

Then in December 2024 the outgoing Biden Administration announced another round of export controls designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor ambitions.

Trump has now further tightened export controls.

Since 2023 there have been reports that Huawei, Tencent and other Chinese start-ups were increasingly seeking Nvidia alternatives.

AI investment

Despite the US restrictions on its export business, Nvidia this week said it will produce its AI supercomputers in the United States for the first time.

In a blog post Nvidia announced that it is “working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce Nvidia AI supercomputers entirely in the US.”

And it also said it would produce “up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL.”

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is among some notable tech leaders who did not attend Trump’s inauguration, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Others such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Shou Zi Chew (TikTok CEO), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet CEO) and Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO) were at the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.