Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joins state dinner for China’s Xi, eyeing $50B chip market

Jensen Huang really wanted to be at this dinner. The Nvidia CEO was a late addition to the US delegation traveling to Beijing, joining Air Force One during a stopover in Anchorage before touching down for a state dinner hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14. He wasn’t alone. Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook also attended the event at the Great Hall of the People, turning what was ostensibly a diplomatic occasion into something closer to a Fortune 500 reunion with better centerpieces. The leather jacket meets the Great Hall Huang’s presence carried particular weight given Nvidia’s fraught relationship with the Chinese market. The company has previously pegged the value of its China business for specific products at roughly $50B, a figure that makes the awkwardness of prior export restrictions feel especially expensive. US restrictions on advanced AI semiconductor exports to China have been one of the defining tensions of the tech-geopolitics era. Washington has spent years tightening the screws on which chips can be sold to Chinese buyers, citing national security concerns around artificial intelligence capabilities. Nvidia, as the dominant supplier of AI training hardwar...