Nvidia CEO urges policy shift as China's chip market falls to zero

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company’s share of China’s advanced chip market has fallen from 95% to zero due to US export restrictions.

Nvidia, based in the US, has been barred from selling its top AI chips, including the A100, H100, and H200, to mainland Chinese firms since 2022.

Although Nvidia received US approval to sell a less powerful H20 chip designed for China, Chinese authorities have launched a security review, and clients have been advised to avoid it.

Huang said at a Citadel Securities event in New York that Nvidia is now “100% out of China.”

He argued that excluding Nvidia from China could harm both countries, noting that China has about half of the world’s AI researchers.

Huang previously said China is only “nanoseconds behind” the US in chipmaking progress.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

China sales near zero put multi-billion quarterly revenue at risk for Nvidia

Nvidia’s data center revenue hit $47.5 billion in fiscal 2024, with China at a single-digit share after export controls in October 2023 1.
The H20 chip designed for China compliance could have brought in $2-5 billion in Q3 if geopolitics allowed 2.
Competitors like Huawei moved in. In September it unveiled AI chip clustering methods (linking many chips to act as one system) to bypass Nvidia.
The US government’s proposed 15% revenue share on any licensed H20 sales to China 2 reduces the appeal even if rules ease. That weakens Nvidia on price against domestic options.

GPU buyers outside China may see better H100 and H200 availability and bargaining power

With China demand gone, 3-6 month lead times for H100 units (the wait from order to delivery) may shorten as supply gets redirected to regions where Nvidia leads 3.
Cloud providers and enterprises negotiating GPU buys should watch whether Nvidia’s projected $54 billion Q3 revenue lands without China sales 4. A miss would tilt pricing toward buyers.
H100 pricing sits at 30k to 40k dollars per unit while H200 carries 15% to 25% premiums at 34k to 50k dollars 3. Better supply could shift power to bulk buyers signing long-term deals.
GPU cloud rental rates range from $2.74 to over $7 per hour 5. Prices may ease if hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud hold excess capacity originally intended for China-exposed customers.