Stephen Nellis
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on Tuesday he did not think the Chinese government would formally announce that it would allow Chinese companies to import the U.S. company’s H200 chips, but that evidence would be provided through purchase orders.
“My expectation is that we won’t issue any press releases or any big announcements,” Huang said after citing strong demand for H200 chips from Chinese customers.
“It’s just a purchase order. If a purchase order comes, it’s because they were able to place a purchase order,” Huang said at a news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
U.S. President Donald Trump last year overturned a long-standing ban on shipments of advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, saying he would allow Nvidia to sell the H200, the predecessor to its current flagship “Blackwell” chip.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said in an interview with JPMorgan analysts that the U.S. government is “frantically” applying for a license for Nvidia to ship its H200 chips to China, but the company still doesn’t know when it will receive approval.
“We’ll wait and see what happens,” Kress said of the applications.
At the press conference, Huang Renxun said that Nvidia is adding H200 chips to Chinese companies.
“Customer demand is high — quite high,” Huang said. “We have activated the supply chain and H200 is flowing through the production lines.”
On Monday, Nvidia showed off six new chips that it said are in full production to form the next generation of “Vera Rubin” artificial intelligence computing systems. Kress declined to say whether Nvidia faces any specific bottlenecks as it ramps up production, but said “we feel very solid” about the state of its supply chain.
Nvidia expects sales of current “Blackwell” chips and upcoming Vera Rubin chips to reach $500 billion by the end of this year. Kress said there have been “discussions with customers” about data center expansion in 2027, but gave no sales guidance.
Huang said overall demand for Nvidia products is high.
“I fully expect our business with TSMC to have a really great year,” Huang said, referring to TSMC, which makes most of Nvidia’s chips.
Huang also said he plans to visit Israel soon, where the company has 5,000 employees and hopes to double its headcount. Local media reported last month that Nvidia was in talks to acquire Israeli company AI21 Labs.
