Nvidia will resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China after CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump in the White House last week in an effort to convince him to remove export controls that had hamstrung the company.
The Trump administration has assured Nvidia that licenses to export the chips will be granted, ending months of halted shipments that had severely impacted the company’s access to one of its largest markets, according to a statement from the firm.
The news sent Nvidia’s stock soaring more than 5% in pre-market trading. Last week, the chipmaker became the first public company in history to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation.
Daniel Ives, senior analyst at Wedbush Securities, hailed the development on Tuesday as “a watershed moment for Nvidia, the AI Revolution thesis, and the overall US tech industry,” called the decision “a monster win for the Godfather of AI Jensen and Nvidia.”
He added that the green light will likely propel Wall Street’s growth estimates for Nvidia “meaningfully over the coming years with China back in the fold.”
In April, Nvidia had paused shipments of the H20 chips — leading to $4.5 billion in inventory write-downs and an estimated $2.5 billion in lost projected sales.
The company halted sales of the chips after the Trump Administration implemented a licensing requirement as part of the president’s “Liberation Day” trade moves.
The halt not only impacted revenue but gave Chinese rivals an opening in the race for AI dominance.
“This is all a game of high-stakes poker between Nvidia and the Trump Administration,” Ives wrote in a note to clients.
“There is only one chip in the world fueling the AI Revolution and it’s Nvidia. That is clearly understood both in the Beltway and Beijing — it’s the new gold or oil in this world.”
The H20 chip was originally engineered to comply with earlier US export controls on China.
With export licenses now expected, the company anticipates a significant boost in revenue during the second half of 2025.
In May, Reuters reported that Nvidia was preparing to launch a new AI chip in China, based on the RTX Pro 6000D, priced significantly lower than the H20 due to its weaker specifications and simpler manufacturing requirements.
The chip would be part of Nvidia’s latest generation of Blackwell-architecture AI processors.
China generated $17 billion in revenue for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, accounting for 13% of the company’s total sales, according to its latest annual report.
Nvidia has been pushing to re-integrate China into its supply chain, though Huang’s visit drew scrutiny in both countries. A bipartisan group of US senators recently sent a letter to Huang urging him not to meet with Chinese companies connected to military or intelligence bodies.
During his visits, Huang said the world has reached an inflection point where AI has become a fundamental resource, like “energy, water and the internet.”
He emphasized Nvidia’s support for open-source research, foundation models, and applications that “democratise AI” and empower emerging economies.
“General-purpose, open-source research and foundation models are the backbone of AI innovation,” he told reporters in Washington.
“We believe that every civil model should run best on the US technology stack, encouraging nations worldwide to choose America.”
Investor enthusiasm reflects Nvidia’s dominant grip on the AI hardware market, where it commands an estimated 97% share of the GPU accelerator segment.
GPU accelerators are powerful computer chips that help speed up complex tasks like training artificial intelligence systems.
They work alongside regular processors to handle the heavy lifting of AI computations — similar to a turbocharger in a car engine.
Nvidia makes most of these chips, which is why it plays such a big role in the AI boom.
Meanwhile, rival chipmakers such as AMD and Intel are expected to introduce their own offerings to meet Chinese demand for AI computing, putting additional pressure on regulators and global suppliers alike.
The Post has sought comment from the White House.
