GoKawiilNvidia CEO Jensen Huang is surprisingly not among the business leaders invited to join President Donald Trump as he visits China from May 13 to 15, 2026. One source familiar with the matter confirmed this with Bloomberg, saying that the leather-clad chief of the most valuable company in the world isn’t on the guest list, which includes Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk. These executives represent significant business interests in China, but, for one reason or another, the White House passed over Huang this time.
Jensen is a fixture around Washington, and he’s been included in several of Trump’s state visits. He was part of the presidential entourage in the Middle East and the UK, and he was even praised by the president in London last year, where Trump said, “You’re taking over the world, Jensen.” So, his exclusion from the president’s China state visit is quite a surprise to many, especially as Trump approved Nvidia H200 exports to China in late 2025.
The AI chip maker used to be the driving force of China’s AI industry, that is, until the U.S. blocked its most advanced semiconductors over concerns that American “dual-use” technologies could be diverted towards China’s military programs. Nvidia made several adjustments to let Chinese companies have access to its hardware with the introduction of defanged versions of its latest chips, like the H20, but even that was disallowed in April 2025.
Latest Videos From
This ban caused Nvidia’s China market share to plummet from a high of 95% to essentially zero, allowing homegrown chipmakers like Huawei, Cambricon, Alibaba, and Baidu to gain ground as they fill the vacuum left behind by the American chipmaker. Even though Trump eventually allowed Chinese companies to purchase H200 chips once again (provided Nvidia secures a license to sell them to a firm), Beijing stepped in and told its customs officers to stop the chips at the border. It has been almost six months since the White House gave Nvidia the go-signal to sell the H200, but U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the company has yet to sell a single H200 AI GPU to China.
Even though Beijing understands that its AI companies need advanced hardware, like Nvidia’s Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin chips, it also needs to balance this with its desire to have a domestic semiconductor industry that can compete against what the U.S. offers. This is likely the reason why Nvidia’s H200 chip is still in regulatory limbo. Nevertheless, China’s access to the latest AI chips has always been a sticking point in its trade negotiations with the U.S, Bloomberg reports. American Enterprise Institute fellow Ryan Fedasiuk also told the publication that Huang’s absence from Trump’s entourage is a “strong signal” to the CCP that Washington will not budge on its stance when it comes to these high-end AI chips.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.