Jensen Huang: China Will Eventually Open Its AI Chip Market

Jensen Huang accompanied Trump on his visit to China, and the outside world is watching whether Nvidia has made progress on exporting AI chips to China. Image source: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

(German Wave Chinese website) Nvidia (also translated as Yingweida) CEO Jensen Huang accompanied U.S. President Trump on his visit to China last week, and on Monday (May 19) gave an exclusive interview to Bloomberg Television. He expects that China will eventually open its market and allow the import of high-end American chips that can be used to train and run artificial intelligence systems.

Huang said: "H200 has obtained a license for sale to China, but the Chinese government must decide to what extent it wants to protect the local market, and to what extent they hope to expand the local market through greater AI capacity... My feeling is that as time goes on, the market will gradually open up."

Huang said that he himself did not directly discuss H200 chip sales with Xi Jinping or Chinese Premier Li Qiang, but the related issue was indeed mentioned in the talks between the U.S. and Chinese leaders. He said: "There were some conversations between President Trump and the leaders, and I also look forward to their decision."

Trump also said on the 15th while returning to Washington that Nvidia's H200 chips "were indeed mentioned, and I think there may be some progress," but did not elaborate. He also pointed out that China has not yet approved the purchase of H200 chips, "because they choose not to do so; they want to develop their own technology."

Xi Jinping, when meeting with a delegation of American companies, said that China's door to opening up to the outside world "will only open wider and wider," and said that "American companies will have broader prospects in China."

Delicate China-U.S. economic and trade relations

Nvidia's high-end chips remain subject to export restrictions

At present, Nvidia's top-tier Blackwell series and the upcoming Rubin series chips still fall within the scope of U.S. high-tech export controls and are prohibited from being exported to the Chinese market. The H200 chip is also quite powerful, second only to the Blackwell series, and is believed to help China train high-end AI models more efficiently and on a large scale.

Huang said in March this year that Nvidia had obtained U.S. approval to ship to "most Chinese customers" and was preparing to restart H200 production. However, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, although American companies had received orders, some Chinese companies were later told that they could not complete the purchases.

Trump agreed in December last year to relax export restrictions on H200 chips, which was seen as a major easing of U.S. controls on China's AI; some U.S. lawmakers are worried that this move may accelerate China's military modernization and pose a threat to the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Commerce has issued the relevant export licenses, but China still imposes restrictions on corporate purchases, partly because it hopes to promote semiconductor self-sufficiency and support local companies such as Huawei.

In Huang's view, China is an important market that may bring Nvidia a huge business opportunity of up to $50 billion, but earlier this year the company still maintained its forecast of "zero revenue" from AI chip sales to China. Nvidia will announce its financial results on Wednesday (the 20th), and the market is watching whether there are changes in the outlook for shipments to China.

Huang: Taiwan remains the core of semiconductor manufacturing

In addition, Huang pointed out that even if the United States promotes domestic chip manufacturing, Taiwan will continue to play a core role in global semiconductor manufacturing, because "overall demand is extremely huge."

He said in an interview while attending the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas: "Supply chain diversification and resilience are possible, and everyone should strive to improve this."

Taiwan occupies a leading position in the global semiconductor industry, and TSMC is the leader in semiconductor manufacturing. Since Trump returned to the White House, he has repeatedly claimed that Taiwan "stole the American semiconductor industry," actively promoted the return of semiconductor manufacturing to the United States, and in March last year jointly announced with TSMC Chairman C.C. Wei that TSMC would invest an additional $100 billion in the United States.

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