Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will speak to journalists when he arrives at a press conference at a hotel in Beijing on July 16, 2025.
Adek Berry | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made his third trip to China in about six months, so it was all smiles and tributes.
As the leader and co-founder of the world’s first newly created $4 trillion market capitalization company, Huang had a special reason to be happy when he met the press on Wednesday. Nvidia had expected to resume sales of advanced H20 artificial intelligence chips to China after a three-month suspension.
“Many of my competitors are my friends,” he pointed out.
Huang said allowing Nvidia chips to be put into China is his understanding that Beijing is part of his interaction with the US to free up much needed rare earths. CNBC reached out to the White House for comment.
Fans in his iconic black leather jacket walked to the sunny courtyard of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel about 15 minutes earlier than schedule, asking multiple questions in the near 90 degrees Fahrenheit weather.
“Only in China we can do this in the sun!” he said.
He then realized that the press conference was to be held in an air-conditioned room.
“What are we doing here? Why didn’t anyone say that?” he said.
He flocked to local reporters seeking to sign books and t-shirts. “Who needs the sign? I’ll do it while I listen.”
Here are some highlights of what he said over the course of 90 minutes:
Who he met
Huang said he was having a “great meeting” with China’s deputy prime minister and his Lifeng, revealing that the discussions do not include restrictions on Chinese battery technology or rare earths.
Earlier in the week he met with Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi. He said the two discussed artificial intelligence for large-scale language models, autonomous driving and robotics.
Xiaomi uses Nvidia’s car chips for its electric vehicles.
Huang told President Donald Trump about his voyage to China in a meeting with White House leaders last week to celebrate Nvidia’s $4 trillion market capitalization.
“[Trump] “I said, “Make a great trip,” fans said.
Export control
Nvidia said Tuesday that it is expected to resume shipments of H20 chips to China soon, following guarantees from the US government. New US requirements at the time forced us to suspend such sales in April.
“When it comes to the H20 ban and lifting the ban, it completely controlled the US and Chinese governments. The debate has nothing to do with me,” Huang said he rejected the idea that he was involved in changing Trump’s mind.
“It’s my job to let the president know what I know, including the technology industry, artificial intelligence, and the development of AI around the world,” he said.
Huang emphasized that Nvidia is compliant with the final policy decision and that tariffs are something that the company must “adapt.”
What’s next for Nvidia in China?
U.S. tipping restrictions have nearly halved Nvidia’s market share in China, Huang said in May. The U.S. export control in China said the company missed out on $2.5 billion in sales in the April quarter, earning an additional $8 billion hit in the July quarter, and likely to lock its revenue at $45 billion during that period.
The US effectively banned Nvidia from selling its most sophisticated chips to China in 2022.
“I want to bring more advanced chips to China than I did in H20,” Huang said in response to a CNBC question. The reason is that technology is constantly moving forward. It’s not like wood. ”
He stressed that better and better technology will be available in a few years, adding, “I think it would be wise to get better and better over time, whatever is permitted to be sold in China.”
However, Huang did not give a definitive answer as to the number of orders received by Nvidia, or when the company would restart local sales of its chips.
He said the US government is still processing NVIDIA licenses to sell chips to China, and the company needs to restart its supply chain.
Huawei
Huang also discussed the competitive outlook for Chinese tech giant Huawei, which is affected by US sanctions ahead of Nvidia’s export controls.
“Everyone who discounts Huawei and discounts China’s manufacturing capabilities is deeply naive,” Huang said, pointing out how Huawei has a “good chip design” and its own connected cloud system.
“They can go all to the market on their own.”
Supporting Huawei’s AI model capabilities is Nvidia’s entire chip-and-tool-independent technology system. Instead, Huawei has developed its own Ascend chip. It works with the company’s “Cann” system, which serves as an alternative to Nvidia’s Cuda. We also built an AI-specific cloud computing system called CloudMatrix, which was released last year.
Asked about signs that many developers still face a challenge for switching, Huawei’s AI chip system, Huang said, “It’s only a matter of time.”
He said, “It’s important to realize I’ve been doing this for 30 years, they’ve done it for a few people, so the fact that they’re already on the dance floor tells you something about how horrifying they are.”
Chinese AI
Han praised China’s AI model, as he spoke in his speech at the opening ceremony of the famous supply chain exposition in Beijing on Wednesday morning.
“The Chinese models of Deepseek, Qwen and Kimi are excellent,” he said, noting breakthroughs from Chinese startups, Alibaba’s models and another model of Alibaba-backed startup Moonshot.
“I think it’s going to become more and more important as time goes on, which models are the smartest,” he said. “One of the models will be the most useful.”
China-developed Deepseek shocked global investors in January and released an AI model that won Openai on development and operating costs. It is not clear how Deepseek developed the model under China’s wide US chip limit, but it is reportedly HighFlyer, the parent of the startup, reportedly stockpiled Nvidia chips.
One aspect that Huang said he is particularly grateful for the Chinese AI models is that they are open source and allow people to download for free and use it on their computers.
He said many companies in many countries will download Deepseek R1 (“99%” of people) and use it locally for healthcare, robotics, imaging and other applications.
As Huang was about to close the press conference, the reporter asked if he would return to China again this year.
“I hope so. You have to invite me.”
