Nvidia's Jensen Huang: The Chinese market will eventually open up to American AI chips

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gives an exclusive interview to Bloomberg, stating that he expects China to gradually open up the import of H200 chips, but so far, none of the ten orders approved by the U.S. have been shipped, as Chinese companies have withdrawn their orders under government instructions and shifted support to Huawei and other domestic suppliers.
(Background summary: Trump: China "chooses not to buy" Nvidia H200, shifting to full self-developed AI chips)
(Additional background: Summary of five key details after Trump’s China visit: no mention of tariffs, no commitments to Taiwan, plans to relax restrictions on China buying Iranian oil...)

$50 billion is the valuation Jensen Huang assigns to the Chinese market. But as of today (the 19th), Nvidia’s AI chip sales in China remain zero.

Last week, Huang attended the Beijing summit as a member of the U.S. business delegation accompanying Trump, and after returning, he gave an interview to Bloomberg. He stated that he expects the Chinese government will eventually open the market: “The Chinese government has to decide how much of the local market they want to protect. My judgment is that this market will open over time.”

### Approved by the U.S., blocked by Beijing

To understand this contradiction, we need to break down what the “U.S. government” and “Chinese companies” are each doing.

H200 is Nvidia’s main AI training chip currently available for sale to Chinese customers. In December 2025, the Trump administration agreed to allow Nvidia to ship H200 to Chinese customers, and the U.S. Department of Commerce has recently issued licenses, permitting ten Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com to purchase.

But none of these orders have been fulfilled.

Huang mentioned in the interview that he did not directly discuss H200 sales with Chinese officials, but he admitted that the topic did come up during side talks between officials.

On the way back to Washington, Trump said that H200 “was indeed mentioned, and I think there will be some progress,” but he did not provide further details. He also added that China has not approved procurement “because they choose not to buy; they want to develop their own technology.”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s statement was more direct: Beijing is blocking imports to steer investment toward domestic chip manufacturers. This is a deliberate industrial policy choice, not driven by technical or security concerns.

On the other hand, the procurement conditions proposed by the U.S. are quite strict: products must undergo third-party security checks within the U.S.; Nvidia must deposit 25% of the transaction amount into the U.S. Treasury; Lenovo and Foxconn are authorized as distributors, adding two more checkpoints. The logic behind this framework is to allow China to access computing power but make the purchase uncomfortable, while enabling the U.S. to track every transaction.

### $50 billion vs. zero: what do these numbers tell us?

Huang previously characterized the Chinese market as Nvidia’s “$50 billion opportunity.” However, in Nvidia’s earlier 2026 financial forecast, the company projected zero sales of Chinese AI chips.

In March this year, Huang stated that Nvidia had received U.S. government approval to ship to “multiple customers” in China and had prepared H200 capacity accordingly. But according to insiders with Bloomberg, although Nvidia received orders, Chinese companies later informed Nvidia that these purchases could not be fulfilled.

The reason behind this “unfulfillable” situation is China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency strategy. The Chinese government is directing capital toward domestic suppliers like Huawei, rather than allowing procurement to flow to U.S. chip manufacturers. From an industrial policy perspective, this is a costly choice: in the short term, Chinese companies may use domestically produced solutions with weaker computing specifications, but in the long run, this fosters the development of local competitors.