Since 2022, the US government has imposed restrictions on the export of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China, citing concerns over potential military applications.
The US also imposed a ban earlier this year on sales of Nvidia’s H20 artificial intelligence chips to the country — which had been Nvidia’s most powerful AI chip cleared for Chinese sales.
Huang’s latest visit has been closely-watched in both US and China. A bipartisan pair of US senators on Friday sent a letter to Huang about his China trip, asking him to abstain from meeting with companies that are working with military or intelligence bodies in the People’s Republic of China.
The senators also asked Huang to refrain from meeting with entities named on the United States’ restricted export list.
Nvidia has faced increased competition from Chinese tech giant Huawei and other makers of graphics processing units – the chips used to train artificial intelligence. But Chinese companies, including its big tech firms, still crave Nvidia chips due to the company’s computing platform known as CUDA.
China generated $17 billion in revenue for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, accounting for 13% of the company’s total sales, based on its latest annual report. Huang has consistently highlighted China as a critical market for Nvidia’s growth.
Nvidia’s market value topped $4 trillion for the first time last week, solidifying the chipmaker’s position as Wall Street’s central player in a race to dominate AI technology.