Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Friday that there are “no active discussions” about selling the company’s cutting-edge Blackwell AI chips to China, pushing back on speculation that a U.S.–China deal could soon allow limited exports.
The Blackwell processor, Nvidia’s most powerful chip for artificial intelligence applications, is currently banned from sale in China under U.S. export restrictions introduced by the Trump administration. Washington fears the hardware could accelerate Beijing’s military and AI capabilities.
“There are no plans to ship anything to China right now,” Huang told reporters during a visit to Tainan, Taiwan, where he attended a TSMC company event. “It’s up to China when they would like Nvidia products to go back to serve the Chinese market,” he added, implying that Beijing’s own policies are a barrier to reentry.
Rumors of a possible diplomatic breakthrough emerged last week when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in South Korea, but no agreement has materialized.
Nvidia is still allowed to sell its H20 chips, a downgraded model tailored for the Chinese market, but Huang said China’s stance has left Nvidia’s market share for advanced AI chips at zero.
Asked about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s plan to build a semiconductor fabrication plant, Huang noted that “building advanced manufacturing like TSMC does is extremely hard,” but added that demand for such technology remains enormous.
Huang also clarified remarks reported by the Financial Times, denying that he had said China would win the AI race. “What I said was that China has very good AI technology,” he explained. “They have many AI researchers. The United States just has to move very, very fast because the world is competitive.”
The comments underscore Nvidia’s delicate position between U.S. export controls and China’s growing AI ecosystem, even as global demand for its chips remains red-hot.