Fresh off Nvidia regaining limited market access, CEO Jensen Huang is pushing for deeper ties into China — and more powerful AI chip exports
Johannes Neudecker/picture alliance via Getty Images
Jensen Huang wants China buying more than just Nvidia $NVDA’s “fourth-best” chips, and he’s not being subtle about it. On a high-profile visit to Beijing this week — his third of the year — the Nvidia CEO told reporters that Nvidia is “doing [its] best” to serve the world’s second-largest economy after meeting with senior Chinese officials.
His comments come just days after the U.S. allowed Nvidia to resume sales of its downgraded H20 AI chip to Chinese clients. But, Huang made it clear that just re-entry isn’t enough. He wants to sell more advanced chips, not just the limited versions now approved under U.S. export controls.
“Whatever we’re allowed to sell in China will continue to get better and better over time,” he said, referencing Nvidia’s Hopper chip architecture, which the H20 is built on.
“Technology is always moving,” Huang told reporters in Beijing. “I think it’s sensible that whatever we’re allowed to sell in China will continue to get better and better over time.”
Huang’s remarks came at the China International Supply Chain Expo, where he praised China’s “super-fast” innovation and hailed its AI ecosystem as “world-class,” name-checking DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Tencent. “China’s open-source AI is a catalyst for global progress,” he said, while also praising China’s “super-fast” innovation powered by the country’s “researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs.” He told state broadcaster CCTV that the Chinese market is “massive, dynamic, and highly innovative” and said it’s crucial for American firms to maintain roots there.
Huang is also expected to hold a closed door media event in Beijing later on Wednesday afternoon.
The billionaire CEO’s comments are a far cry from the tone in Washington. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday downplayed Nvidia’s move into China, calling the H20 the company’s “fourth-best” chip and arguing that allowing China to buy limited tech keeps it tethered to American suppliers, while staying a safe distance from military-grade performance.
“We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best,” Lutnick said in a CNBC interview. “The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it. … We want to keep having the Chinese use the American technology stack, because they still rely upon it. … You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack.”
But Huang’s message from Beijing was more forward-looking: Nvidia wants to stay in the Chinese market — not just with what it’s allowed to sell today but with what it hopes it will be able to sell tomorrow. “[Chinese officials] want to know that Nvidia continues to invest here,” Huang said. “We are still doing our best to serve the market here.”
The CEO said he was told that China is “welcoming foreign companies to invest here and build business here” and that the country is “open and stable.”
Beijing’s foreign ministry said the expo serves as a “new calling card for China’s high-level opening up to the outside world.” Spokesman Lin Jian said, “China is willing to continue working with all parties to safeguard the stability and smooth operation of global production and supply chains and promote the building of an open world economic system.”
Nvidia, now the world’s most valuable public company, has been caught in the middle of a growing geopolitical tug-of-war. The H20 was designed specifically to sidestep U.S. export restrictions that bar sales of Nvidia’s most powerful chips to China. Still, the chip hit a wall earlier this year when, in April, the Trump administration tightened licensing rules, prompting a $4.5 billion write-down in Nvidia’s earnings and a $2.5 billion revenue shortfall last quarter.
As a result, Huang is playing both sides carefully. Just days ago, he met with President Donald Trump in the U.S. to brief him on AI policy and trade risks. “It’s my job to inform the president about what I know very well,” he told reporters about the conversation. When asked if Huang thought he swayed the president on export controls, the CEO said, “I don’t think I changed his mind.”
According to U.S. officials, the H20 sales resumption is tied to continued trade negotiations with Beijing over rare-earth materials, which the U.S. desperately needs for its own defense and tech supply chains. Lutnick, in the CNBC interview, said the chip exports are a strategic tool, not a giveaway.
But Huang struck a slightly different tone. “The recent change came out of constructive discussions between the U.S. and Chinese governments around export controls,” Huang told reporters at the expo. He said that he has been “assured that the licenses will come very fast,” adding that “there are many order books already in,” reportedly from giants such as Tencent and ByteDance — though neither has yet confirmed that. Formal U.S. export licenses are still required for every transaction.
And there may be more chips on the horizon: Nvidia previewed an export-compliant RTX Pro GPU designed specifically for Chinese clients .
Inside Nvidia, the calculus is clear. Losing the China market would be a “tremendous loss,” as Huang told CNBC in early May. At that time, he estimated that the Chinese AI market could be worth $50 billion within two to three years and said that over 50% of the world’s AI researchers work in China, and cutting them off means handing the AI stack to someone else. “If all the AI developers are in China,” he told CNBC earlier this year, “the China stack is going to win.”
Huang is still trying to thread a needle that few CEOs can: championing U.S. innovation, playing by Washington’s rules, and still managing to charm Beijing. Getting the H20 back in China is just a first step. The real prize is a pipeline of future chips that are good enough for China’s booming AI market — all without crossing the line. And if anyone can sell that vision to both superpowers, it’s the CEO of the world’s most valuable chipmaker.
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