In 2025, Jensen Huang "visited the mainland three times" and took a close photo with Lei Jun

On July 14, informed sources revealed that Jensen Huang arrived in Beijing last weekend, invited to attend the third Chain Expo, marking his third visit to China this year. Subsequently, Tencent Technology also obtained a photo of him with Lei Jun.

Photo of Jensen Huang meeting Lei Jun

Three times a year, more than the number of times a worker away from home returns home each year.

In the ranking of Silicon Valley CEOs visiting China, Tim Cook and Elon Musk are at the top, with the former visiting three times in 2024 and the latter basically once a year. Now, as the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang has caught up with Cook and firmly holds the top spot in the Silicon Valley CEO visit ranking.

There is a detail—previously, netizens focused on the various side stories of Silicon Valley tycoons visiting China, eating pancakes, buns, hot pot, etc., but last year, Musk was quite busy and was photographed wearing a suit and sneakers, staying for less than 24 hours. At that time, the general belief was that Musk's visit aimed to promote the comprehensive rollout of FSD in the mainland market.

The question arises, NVIDIA's advanced chips have long been embargoed, and the H20 specially supplied for the mainland market has also been blocked. What is Jensen Huang here for this time?

On July 9, NVIDIA's market value first exceeded $4 trillion, image generated by AI

If Jensen Huang doesn't come, Su Ma will come

"The mainland market is too important." Jensen Huang has said this in many occasions.

This can be corroborated by two key data points: first, the Chinese AI chip market is expected to reach $50 billion, and American companies need to retain access to this market. Second, NVIDIA's market share in the mainland has significantly dropped from 95% at the beginning of the Biden administration to 50%.

The market is large, and NVIDIA is passively shrinking significantly.

The shrinkage is also reflected in the official financial report—In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, NVIDIA's revenue in the mainland market (including Hong Kong) was $5.522 billion, accounting for 12.53% of the total revenue of $44 billion for the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 121% compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. At its peak, the mainland market contributed as much as 25% to NVIDIA's revenue.

If products were not restricted, how much revenue could the mainland contribute? 221%, 321%, it's all possible. Therefore, purely based on revenue size and growth potential, no company has a reason to give up the mainland market.

The market's perception of Jensen Huang has multiple mirrors: from the early "leather jacket master" hardcore geek image to now being labeled as the "master of castration techniques" due to the special chip supply strategy. However, it needs to be clarified that the procurement of NVIDIA products by Chinese tech companies is not in binary opposition to supporting domestic chips In fact, leading companies generally have their own solutions: Baidu nurtures Kunlun chips, ByteDance collaborates with Cambricon, and Alibaba has Pingtouge.

The reality is that there is a huge gap between the current domestic supply and the AI giants' demand for computing power, which often reaches hundreds of thousands.

According to Cambricon's financial report and Muxi's prospectus revenue estimates, a single brand of domestic AI chips can only supply a few tens of thousands of cards per year, while large companies need 100,000 or 200,000 cards for AI. The gap between demand and supply is too large, and customer demand will not shrink proactively due to insufficient supply.

The massive purchase of NVIDIA also has a deeper logic—the urgency of the global AI arms race.

According to foreign media reports, OpenAI has reached a cumulative user base of 800 million, just a step away from the 1 billion mark. At this scale, it can engage in search, social networking, payments, and even mobile phones. To avoid being disrupted, giants must continuously iterate their models and algorithms, all of which are built on the "computing power narrative."

Therefore, whether it is Silicon Valley giants or Chinese tech companies, they are all frantically hoarding computing power—on one hand, Microsoft purchases 485,000 NVIDIA chips annually, and ByteDance buys 230,000 GPUs; on the other hand, Microsoft, Meta, and others are successively entering self-research.

The roadmap for tech companies' self-researched chips, with red indicating those already released, and \* representing those pending confirmation, source HSBC.

In this context, performance-limited special supply chips can be seen as the "commercial optimal solution" under compliance conditions, ultimately returning to the logic of business.

Further extending this, it is also important for NVIDIA to maintain its visibility in the mainland China market.

A domestic chip industry insider said, “If Jensen Huang doesn't come, Su Zifeng and Chen Liwu might come with solutions. Su Ma frequently visits the mainland, often meeting with clients.”

“Leather Jacket Lao Huang” and “Suit Lao Huang”

NVIDIA's market value first broke $4 trillion during intraday trading on July 9, causing a sensation on social media, with everyone marveling at NVIDIA's historic achievement.

NVIDIA's success has elements of luck, but it is also not without hard work. As the CEO of a nearly $4 trillion market value company, Jensen Huang repeatedly comes to the mainland market to reassure employees, comfort clients, and provide solutions.

Regarding Jensen Huang's visit to China, what the outside world sees is all public, but there are actually some undisclosed itineraries.

At the end of last year, Jensen Huang appeared in Hong Kong, attending an event at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he had a dialogue with Shen Xiangyang. Behind this, there was actually a secret itinerary—visiting the number one position of two clients in China.

In the view of Stephen Witt, author of "The Heart of NVIDIA," Jensen Huang's success also comes from foresight. Last year, we had a conversation with Stephen Witt, and he made a very vivid analogy: "Suppose there is a group of people fishing at the dock, and one person is using a net to catch fish on the beach. The people at the dock are all laughing at him, but this person persists for ten years, during which he catches nothing, until one day he catches the biggest fish he has ever seen in his life. Do you think that guy is lucky, or does he have foresight?"

However, when it comes to customizing special products for mainland customers, effort is greater than foresight, and sometimes a bit of luck is also needed.

There is a key timeline worth noting:

• On April 7, Jensen Huang appeared in a suit and took a photo with Trump at Mar-a-Lago;
• On April 9, the U.S. government notified NVIDIA that H20 exports would require a license indefinitely;
• On April 14, NVIDIA officially announced a $500 billion investment plan in the U.S.;
• On April 15, Trump praised NVIDIA's move and promised to expedite the issuance of export licenses. On the same day, NVIDIA announced that it had received notification of an indefinite export license for H20.

Behind the above timeline is Jensen Huang's back-and-forth maneuvering for business. Insiders revealed that Huang actually received a verbal commitment from Trump regarding the H20 license and synchronized this internally, which can also be corroborated by Trump's social media, but the reason for the eventual change of heart remains unclear.

Trump stated on social media that he would expedite the issuance of export licenses to NVIDIA.

Although NVIDIA did not obtain the H20 export license at that time, it did not suffer losses either. The $500 billion investment commitment brought access to the Middle Eastern market, which can be seen as a silver lining, especially since the restrictions on the Middle Eastern market under Biden's "AI Diffusion Rules" are also very strict.

To compete for the mainland Chinese market, Huang has undergone a very noticeable change—he has transformed from "Leather Jacket Huang" to "Suit Huang." Whether attending the Mar-a-Lago dinner or coming to Beijing for a conference, Huang has swapped his iconic leather jacket for a more composed dark blue suit.

Many NVIDIA employees have said that Huang's transformation is bittersweet. For the sake of the market and business, Huang had to tone down his personality, replaced by humility and respect, transforming from Leather Jacket Huang to Suit Huang.

No H20, but likely B20

In recent weeks, there have been rumors in the industry that NVIDIA will provide new special version chips B20, B30, and B40 to mainland customers in September, with reports that some cloud factory customers have already received testing products.

An insider revealed that all special products must be reported in advance. The rumored B20 and B40 products were indeed discussed internally before the ban on H20, but no conclusion has been reached yet.

The speculation and rumors about products B20 and B40 align with business logic, as one of Huang's repeated visits to China is to communicate solutions, and what specific products are presented will depend on the results of negotiations. As for what they will ultimately be called, it is not important From the current leaked hardware specifications, the possibility of B20 is higher than that of B40. The former aligns closely with the hardware specifications of leading domestic products, and even has less memory than domestic ones. The low possibility of B40 is mainly because it is rumored to retain a 900GB/s NVLink interconnect, a performance that exceeds the regulatory standards of 2022. At that time, the special version H800 retained NVLink but had a bandwidth of only 400GB/s.

“H20 only received an (indefinite export license) letter, without any rules, (the process) is relatively easy to relax,” revealed a practitioner who has been tracking technology policy for a long time. He also emphasized that the current bottleneck is not at the administrative level, but at the legislative level.

For this $4 trillion market cap giant, the opportunity to obtain H20's export license is not optimistic, and new special products have yet to be launched. NVIDIA is already in a state of having no products to sell in the Chinese data center market.

At the earnings conference in the first quarter, NVIDIA stated that due to export control measures, H20 sales were restricted, resulting in a loss of $5.5 billion, involving inventory, reserves, and procurement commitments. If estimated based on a 50% inventory ratio, there would be over 150,000 units of H20 sitting in warehouses gathering dust. NVIDIA also expects to incur a revenue loss of $8 billion in the second quarter, which translates to nearly 450,000 units of shipments. Over two quarters, the embargo has caused a loss of $13.5 billion (approximately RMB 96.7 billion).

Some may ask, can these H20 not be sold overseas, or cannot enter special channels?

First, the overseas market does not need products like H20 at all, as it is a performance-limited product with almost zero market appeal; secondly, H20 cannot illegally flow into the mainland market through official channels, which can be answered in the case of General Electric's acquisition of Alstom.

In 2019, Frédéric Pierucci, an executive at French Alstom, published a book titled "The American Trap" based on his personal experiences, mentioning that General Electric collaborated with the U.S. Department of Justice during the acquisition process of Alstom, using "long-arm jurisdiction" and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to arrest Pierucci on baseless commercial bribery charges, leading to his imprisonment twice for a total of 25 months.

Clearly, no one would take such risks to promote the continued circulation of a restricted product like H20 from a corporate level.

Jensen Huang would certainly not do this, and every move he makes must be in sync with the administrative departments, which is why he met with Trump again before coming to China.

Stabilizing the "morale" of 4,000 Chinese employees

What Jensen Huang refers to as "the mainland Chinese market is too important" is realized by a group of Chinese employees.

Currently, NVIDIA has subsidiaries in three locations in mainland China: Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, with a workforce of around 4,000 people, accounting for about 11% of the total global workforce, which corresponds to the mainland market's contribution of 11%-12% to quarterly revenue In recent years, Jensen Huang has maintained the habit of participating in the Spring Festival Gala with employees in mainland China—two years ago, he danced the yangge in Beijing, and last year he performed the APT dance.

Among the 4,000 employees in China, a significant portion has been stationed at major clients' offices for a long time, providing technical and business support, and maintaining a very high level of stability. Previously, Huang revealed at the annual meeting that NVIDIA's global employee turnover rate is 2%, with the lowest turnover rate among mainland employees at only 0.9% per year.

The ultra-low turnover rate is also related to NVIDIA's salary and equity incentives, the latter of which often constitutes a large portion of employee income.

According to information obtained by Tencent Technology, NVIDIA also awards a "CEO Special Award" to outstanding employees each year, with the number of awards increasing in recent years, although the amount of the bonuses has correspondingly decreased.

Public information shows that in 2016, NVIDIA's management awarded CEO Special Award to deep learning solutions architect Leo Tam—1,000 shares of NVIDIA stock, with Jensen Huang personally forwarding the email to express gratitude, which can be said to maximize emotional value. Considering the stock price at that time and factors such as stock splits, these 1,000 shares, if held until today, would be worth over $6.5 million.

NVIDIA's Global Operations Vice President Jay informed about the stock incentives via email, which Jensen Huang forwarded, source: Leo Tam

In addition, in recent years, some employees of NVIDIA China have shared their personal income tax declaration records on social media. A screenshot of a personal income tax declaration posted by a user on Xiaohongshu in 2024 (see left image below) shows that an employee suspected to be from NVIDIA's Beijing office had an average monthly salary of 114,200 yuan for the year 2024, with a total annual income of 16.88 million yuan.

Information shared by users on social media regarding suspected NVIDIA employee income tax declarations, for reference only

With extremely high salaries, incentives, ultra-low turnover rates, and these 4,000 employees, what is the connection with Jensen Huang's frequent visits?

It is evident that if solutions are continuously restricted and revenue from the mainland market remains zero, this group of people may face a very realistic topic—layoffs.

Layoffs are not uncommon among today's big companies in Silicon Valley. Not long ago, Microsoft announced layoffs of 9,000 people, Google announced layoffs of 12,000 people at the beginning of the year, and in March, Amazon followed suit with a plan to cut 14,000 positions.

Some institutions have estimated that from 2024 to May 2025, Silicon Valley companies have eliminated a total of approximately 400,000 positions globally From this perspective, in the context of almost no sales of data center products in the mainland China market, Jensen Huang's frequent visits not only serve to reassure the market and customers but also play a role in comforting employees and stabilizing morale, a point that has rarely been noted or mentioned in the past.

To retain these 4,000 employees, Jensen Huang must have a viable "solution" to offer.

At the year-end meeting of the Beijing office last year, he told employees, "Many Chinese researchers grew up playing video games with NVIDIA graphics cards; I have been training you for this day for many years." The implication is that NVIDIA needs these mainland employees to continue serving local researchers. In fact, there was an even more straightforward statement at the meeting where he said, "As long as you join NVIDIA, you will grow old with me, and I feel very proud."

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