Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang<\/a> joined US President Donald Trump on his visit to China as a last-minute addition, thrusting AI and technology into the spotlight before a high-stakes Beijing summit.<\/p>\nHuang is among several US business leaders including Apple Inc.\u2019s Tim Cook and Tesla Inc.\u2019s Elon Musk on Trump\u2019s first overseas trip since waging war in the Middle East \u2014 a 36-hour visit with Xi Jinping that\u2019s expected to encompass the war, tariffs and the self-ruled island of Taiwan. The list of attendees until Tuesday had not included Huang, whose company makes the chips at the heart of the AI boom and has been pushing for greater leeway in a market he\u2019s identified as a $50 billion opportunity.<\/p>\n
The Nvidia chief executive officer was spotted on the tarmac boarding the presidential plane and Trump later confirmed his attendance in a social media post, saying it was an honor to have Huang and other business leaders as part of the US delegation. Trump will also be joined by Boeing Co.\u2019s Kelly Ortberg and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.\u2019s David Solomon, among others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to \u2018open up\u2019 China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People\u2019s Republic to an even higher level!\u201d Trump said in the post. \u201cIn fact, I promise, that when we are together, which will be in a matter of hours, I will make that my very first request.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether Trump will raise with Xi any concerns that relate specifically to Nvidia, whose shares rose 2.2% in premarket trading in New York on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The big-ticket item would be seeking Beijing\u2019s approval for Chinese customers to buy Nvidia\u2019s advanced H200 AI chips. Those products, which are used to train and run models like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, have always required Washington\u2019s permission for export to China due to US concerns that the technology could boost the Asian country\u2019s military.<\/p>\n
Shares of MiniMax Group Inc. and Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Co., known as Zhipu, soared in Hong Kong as investors bet on Chinese AI developers gaining access to more powerful Nvidia accelerators. \u201cZhipu and Minimax seem to be excited on news that Jensen Huang is joining Trump on his trip to China, something that can raise odds of onshore LLMs getting access to better Nvidia chips,\u201d said Jian Shi Cortesi, a fund manager at Gam Investment Management in Zurich.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s team granted H200 licenses several months ago in a major reversal of US policy and huge win for Nvidia\u2019s Huang \u2014 but Beijing remains a holdup. While China\u2019s central government has for years complained about US export controls on advanced technology, Beijing also wants to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors and boost domestic champions like Huawei Technologies Co. Last year, China rejected imports of less-advanced Nvidia AI chips called H20s.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long road on H200 sales, which emerged as a possibility after China\u2019s H20 import block. Nvidia secured Trump\u2019s support for H200 exports in December and some initial US licenses in early 2026. Then in March, Huang said that Nvidia had received Washington\u2019s permission for shipments to \u201cmany customers\u201d in China and was firing up H200 production accordingly. That was also in response to receiving official purchase orders from firms in the Asian country \u2014 an indication that Beijing had approved the sales.<\/p>\n
But those Chinese companies later informed Nvidia that they could not actually fulfill the purchases, according to a person familiar with the matter. And in April, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that no H200s had been shipped to Chinese firms because the \u201cChinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they\u2019re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry.\u201d It\u2019s unclear how much new inventory Nvidia is now sitting on.<\/p>\n
Read: GLOBAL INSIGHT: AI Chip Breakthrough Unlikely at Trump-Xi Summit<\/p>\n
White House spokesman Steven Cheung, asked about why Nvidia\u2019s Huang was now joining Trump\u2019s trip, said Huang\u2019s schedule changed and \u201cit just happened to work out.\u201d Trump called Huang this morning and asked him to come, and the Nvidia leader flew to Anchorage to meet Air Force One on its planned layover, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cheung said he wasn\u2019t aware of Trump calling Huang before the schedule change.<\/p>\n
\u201cJensen is attending the summit at the invitation of President Trump to support America and the administration\u2019s goals,\u201d Nvidia said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The executives joining Trump are all from companies with significant existing China exposure and represent sectors expected to be part of the trip\u2019s commercial agenda, according to another person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
US export controls have long been a sticking point in trade discussions between Washington and Beijing. Limits on China\u2019s ability to acquire American technology fueled a standoff last year between the world\u2019s largest economies that saw Beijing impose curbs on shipments of rare earths to US customers.<\/p>\n
Just last Thursday, Huang had expressed his willingness to join Trump on the highly anticipated trip to China, where the president is scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. \u201cIf invited, it would be a privilege \u2014 it would be a great honor to represent the United States and to go to China with President Trump,\u201d Huang told CNBC.<\/p>\n
\u2013With assistance from Edwin Chan, Michael Shepard, Maggie Eastland and Abhishek Vishnoi.<\/p>\n
(Updates with Nvidia\u2019s premarket share move in the fifth paragraph.)<\/p>\n
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jeff Mason and Mackenzie Hawkins, Bloomberg Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang joined US President Donald Trump on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[474,250,574,2182,13427,575,996,584,520],"class_list":{"0":"post-70563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jensen-huang","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-jensen-huang","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-morning-wire","13":"tag-nvidia","14":"tag-silicon-valley","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-trump-administration"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116571610072614513","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}