Jensen Huang: China Shouldn't Access Nvidia's Advanced Chips Due to Zero Market Share

At the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said China should not have access to the company’s most advanced chips, putting Blackwell and Rubin at the center of a debate that has already pushed Nvidia out of the top end of the Chinese AI market.

One report from the conference said Jensen Huang argued the U.S. should keep “the first, the most, and the best” in AI hardware, a position that matches Nvidia’s broader push for American leadership even as it tries to preserve some business in China.

Huang also said Nvidia is still waiting for the contours of any resumed China sales to show up in orders, not press releases.

“Currently, we are not planning to ship anything to China,” he said. “It's just going to be purchase orders. If the purchase orders come, it's because they're able to place purchase orders,” he said at a press conference during CES.

Reuters reported that the company is ramping up H200 production for Chinese firms while waiting on license approvals.

The comments land after months of mixed signals from Nvidia about China.

In November, Jensen Huang said there were “no active discussions” about selling Blackwell to China and told reporters that Nvidia’s advanced AI chip market share there was zero.

He also said then that it was up to China to change course if Nvidia products were to return to the market.

The policy fight matters because China is still one of the few places where Nvidia can chase large-scale demand, but U.S. export controls have pushed the company toward older chips and left domestic rivals room to expand.

Jensen Huang has argued that China has a deep bench of AI researchers and that the United States has to keep moving at high speed if it wants to stay ahead, a view that frames Nvidia’s China strategy as a balance between security rules, revenue and long-term competitive pressure.

For now, Nvidia is stuck with a split market: its newest chips stay out of China, while H200 shipments depend on approvals that have not yet turned into a public restart, leaving the company’s next move tied as much to Washington as to Beijing.