AsianFin -- Nvidia Corporation CEO Jensen Huang was said to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday as the president cheered shares of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker surged following his tariffs implemented.
Screenshot from China Central Television
Huang is meeting with Trump at the White House on Thursday, days before a planned trip to China by the chief executive, Bloomberg learned from people familiar with the matter, though not providing details of what the two men are discussing. Huang is reportedly scheduled to visit Beijing where he’ll meet with senior Chinese officials including the commerce minister.
Reuters later echoed the news, citing sources that Huang’s meeting with Trump took place a day before his plans to visit China. Neither Nvidia nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
Trump earlier Thursday in a post on his social media platform Truth Social praised Nvidia for its substantial stock gain since his administration rolled out tariffs, and suggested the inflation ease and the boom in tech stocks justify interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
“Tech Stocks, Industrial Stocks, & NASDAQ, HIT ALL-TIME, RECORD HIGHS! CRYPTO, “Through the Roof.” NVIDIA IS UP 47% SINCE TRUMP TARIFFS. USA is taking in Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs. COUNTRY IS NOW “BACK.””, Trump wrote, “A GREAT CREDIT! FED SHOULD RAPIDLY LOWER RATE TO REFLECT THIS STRENGTH. USA SHOULD BE AT THE “TOP OF THE LIST.” NO INFLATION!!!””
The U.S. stock market benchmark on Thursday reached milestones as investors continued to shrug off tariff concerns. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite index edged up 0.27% and 0.09%, respectively, to close at all-time highs, driven by tech giants including Nvidia. The AI chipmaker saw its stock refreshed new close record for the third straight day, The stock for the first time finished above $4 trillion in market capitalization, cementing Nvidia’s status as the world’s most valuable listed company and Wall Street’s most sought-after stocks.
Nvidia stock has skyrocketed since OpenAI’s ChatGPT initiated new artificial intelligence (AI) frenzy in 2020, with a gain of more than 1,000% since the start of 2023. The California-based company first passed the $1 trillion mark of market valuation in June 2023, less than a year later, first surpassed $2 trillion, and in June first topped $3 trillion.
The new record of Nvidia stock marks investors regained confidence of the AI chip giant after Chinese upstart DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley with a competitive model DeepSeek-R1 comparable to OpenAI’s at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. rival, which also raised more questions on sustainability of the massive AI spending on infrastructure. And the financial results and outlook provided for the first quarter of this year reassured investors regarding the AI demand amid increasing economic uncertainties brought by the Trump administration.
Nvidia’s big customers including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com. Inc., which contribute around 40% of the company’s revenue, projected around $350 billion of capital expenditures (Capex) over their coming fiscal years, compared with the spending of $310 billion for the current year, according to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Huang has repeated his criticism of U.S. export controls on chips because they give Chinese rivals including Huawei Technologies Co. an advantage.
In the financial results released on May 28, Nvidia said incurred a $4.5 billion charge during its first fiscal quarter ended April 27 associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations as the demand for H20 diminished under the new requirements for export license. The company on April 9 was informed by the U.S. government that a license is required for exports of its H20 products, which were designed primarily for China, into the market.
Huang told analysts on an earnings call Nvidia has some limited options that it is exploring so it can continue to serve the Chinese market, and for now, it has to take a write-off for H20 chips. “China is one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success with half of the world’s AI researchers based there; the platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally today,” Huang said. “However, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to us. The H20 export ban ended our Hopper data center business in China. We cannot reduce Hopper further to comply.”
Huang cautioned that “shielding Chinese chipmakers from U.S. competition only strengthens them abroad, and weakens American’s position. Export restrictions have spurred China’s innovation and scale.” He continued: “the AI race is not just about chips. It’s about which stack the world runs on.”
Huang in a CNN interview on June 12 said Nvidia would exclude the Chinese market from its revenue and profit forecast following the tough U.S. trade restrictions on chip sales to China, and reiterated his calling for easing chip export curbs.
“The goals of the export controls are not being achieved,” he said. “Whatever those goals are that were being discussed initially, (they) are apparently not working. And so I think, with all export controls, the goals have to be well-articulated and tested over time.”
