Trump snubs Jensen Huang for his trip to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did everything that President Trump asked him to do: he popped in to Mar-a-Lago on several occasions, he flew to the UK and donned a formal tux at a royal banquet with King Charles, he joined Trump’s elite tech council, and he appeared at events with Trump in Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

This week, Trump will travel to China for a high-stakes meeting flanked by Tesla’s Elon Musk, outgoing Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick, and a bevy of other tech executives. But Huang will not be making the trip.

Huang told CNBC last week that it would be a “great honor” to make the trip to China with Trump, but Reuters reports that Huang was not invited, citing a source that said the White House is “focusing more on agriculture and commercial aviation matters” on this trip.

Nvidia has a lot riding on China as a potential market for its advanced H200 GPUs. After lots of back-and-forth over the past year, the Trump administration finally announced an unusual licensing scheme to allow limited sales of the chips (and similar offerings from peers like Advanced Micro Devices) to approved buyers in China — with the government getting a 25% cut of all sales.

Nvidia was said to have been ramping up production of the chips in anticipation of the new market, estimated to be worth $54 billion, but Chinese officials have blocked the import of the H200s, leaving the chip designer in the lurch despite strong demand from Chinese AI companies. The Financial Times reported that Nvidia recently told partner TSMC to halt production of the H200 upon China sales uncertainty (though it said it had ample supply), in favor of its most advanced Vera Rubin chips.

China, like other countries, is eager to boost its own domestic AI industry. Its technology is beginning to close the gap with competitive AI models like DeepSeek, Qwen, and new data centers full of Alibaba’s own Zhenwu chips.

On Nvidia’s last earnings call, CFO Colette Kress said the company was not certain it would be able to sell any H200s in China.

Nvidia reports its first-quarter FY2027 earnings on May 20.