The Donald Trump administration has withdrawn public export regulations on NVIDIA's artificial intelligence (AI) chips after three months, and Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's chief executive officer (CEO), has reportedly waged a full-scale effort to persuade key White House aides to change Trump's mind.
The New York Times (NYT) reported that CEO Huang transformed into a negotiator visiting the world to persuade Trump and quietly built relationships with White House officials who support global business interests amid the hardline Trump administration towards trade with China.
These efforts began to bear fruit as CEO Huang met with Trump at the White House last week and stressed the need to resume sales of its chips in China, sources said. Huang argued that U.S.-made chips must become the global standard, claiming that conceding the Chinese market to local competitors in China would be a serious mistake.
He was originally an electrical engineer with no interest in lobbying, and two former employees said he viewed government work as trivial. However, as NVIDIA's AI chips became intertwined with international security issues, he had no choice but to dive into Washington politics, according to NYT.
The initial persuasion process was not smooth. Shortly after the Trump administration began, CEO Huang met with Trump to discuss AI policy but did not achieve significant results. Later, in a meeting arranged by the Secretary of Commerce in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, CEO Huang claimed that the AI chip (H20) for export to China had significantly lower performance than other products, posing no threat to U.S. security and argued that the export restrictions would instead harm U.S. corporations. However, administration officials concluded that CEO Huang deliberately downplayed the chip's performance, and ultimately two weeks later, issued an official letter to NVIDIA to halt sales of the H20 chips in China.
The turning point came when CEO Huang began building relationships with key figures inside the White House. The positive reception of Huang's assertions came from David Sachs, who oversees AI and cryptocurrency policies at the White House and is from Silicon Valley. He was skeptical of the sales restrictions on AI chips implemented by the Biden administration and believed it was better to promote U.S. technology globally rather than impede American chip sales.
CEO Huang frequently exchanged views with Sachs and Sriram Krishnan, the chief policy advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. With China's Huawei unveiling its AI chip (CloudMatrix 384) in April showing comparable performance to American products, Sachs also began to feel a sense of urgency. CEO Huang publicly urged a policy shift, stating, "Export regulations have only made Chinese companies stronger."
Subsequently, CEO Huang aligned his approach with the policy direction of the Trump administration. He announced a $500 billion (approximately 700 trillion won) manufacturing investment plan in the U.S. alongside Trump at the White House, praising Trump by saying, "Thanks to President Trump's leadership, U.S. manufacturing has been able to grow." The next day, he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, continuing to argue that the ban on sales to China would do more harm to the U.S.
The decisive turning point was established in the Middle East. CEO Huang accompanied President Trump on his Middle East tour last May. During this visit, NVIDIA signed a major contract to build the world's largest data center hub in the UAE, and Trump reportedly expressed trust in Huang, referring to him as "my friend." Inside NVIDIA, this was viewed as a 'significant breakthrough.'
Not satisfied with this, CEO Huang pushed for a return to the Chinese market. Shortly after the Middle East contract, he told reporters in Taiwan, "Export regulations have only made Chinese companies stronger," declaring them "ultimately a failed policy."
Last week, CEO Huang returned to Washington for final negotiations with President Trump. He once again emphasized the logic that "American technology must become a global standard like the dollar," which Sachs, who was also present, supported. After an hour-long meeting, Trump finally decided to allow NVIDIA to sell chips in China, and days later, NVIDIA announced that the administration had reversed its previous stance.
NYT assessed that "the resumption of NVIDIA's AI chip exports to China symbolically demonstrates that CEO Huang has established himself as the most influential figure in the tech industry and signifies that NVIDIA has leapfrogged beyond semiconductor corporations in Silicon Valley to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world and a key player in the AI boom."