Jensen Huang Joins Trump’s China Trip After Presidential Phone Call
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang flew to Alaska to board Air Force One and join President Donald Trump‘s delegation to China, CNBC reported Tuesday, after the president personally called Huang to extend a last-minute invitation.
Huang had not appeared on earlier published lists of business executives travelling with Trump to Beijing this week. After media coverage highlighted his absence, Trump placed a direct call to the chip giant’s chief executive, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC.
A Personal Invitation From the Oval Office
Trump is leading a delegation of more than a dozen American executives to meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Nvidia confirmed Huang’s participation in a statement, describing his attendance as being “at the invitation of President Trump to support America and the administration’s goals.” The company declined to offer further explanation for the unusual mid-journey addition to the group.
Trump subsequently posted on social media to confirm Huang was aboard Air Force One. He also pushed back against reports that the Nvidia chief had initially been excluded. The president indicated his opening request to Xi would be pressing Beijing to allow American companies greater access to Chinese markets.
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Years of Chip Restrictions Loom Over the Visit
The Jensen Huang China trip carries significant weight given the recent history between Nvidia and Beijing. The company’s most powerful processors, essential for training large AI models, have faced increasingly tight US export restrictions on sales to China over the past four years. As recently as February, Nvidia disclosed that even government-approved chip variants had not yet been cleared for entry into the Chinese market.
Beijing has responded by accelerating domestic chip development and supporting homegrown AI models such as DeepSeek. An official article published earlier this month in a Chinese Communist Party journal acknowledged that local firms had been forced to slow development under US restrictions, while noting Nvidia’s commanding share of the global GPU market.
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Expectations Remain Cautious
Former US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez tempered optimism about what Huang’s presence might achieve on the export controls front. Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia, Gutierrez said a deal on export controls remained a distant prospect, though he welcomed the symbolism of Huang joining the president’s party.
Markets will watch closely whether the Beijing meetings produce any concrete movement on chip access or broader trade terms between the world’s two largest economies.
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