Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang says US tech companies can’t be left out of the China market and that they need to serve as a worldwide standard, akin to how the US dollar is the world’s top reserve currency.
“[President Trump] understands that the American tech stack should be the world standard. Just as the American dollar is the world standard that economies are built on, we want the American tech stack for the world’s technology and industries to be built on, and that includes China,” Huang told Yahoo Finance during an interview following the company’s second quarter earnings.
The CEO of the world’s most valuable company said that Nvidia is getting the engine “fired back up” to sell chips into the country and already has licenses from the US government.
“We’ve been approved and licensed to be able to ship to China, and now we’re looking for orders in China,” Huang added.
The company reported Q2 data center revenue topped out at $41.1 billion. Segment revenue was $26.2 billion in the prior-year period. The numbers didn’t include sales of its lower-powered H20 chips into China.
It also issued third quarter guidance of $54 billion plus or minus 2%. And that doesn’t include sales to China. Any additional sales from the country would be a “bonus on top,” Huang said.
“We have every opportunity to succeed in the China market, if they would allow for American technology companies to be able to play there. And so I’m hoping things will get sorted out,” he explained.
During the company’s earnings call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress explained that the company is still waiting on the Trump administration to formalize an agreement that will see Nvidia pay the government a 15% cut of its sales into China.
Huang said that, while the company is working with the Trump administration on China, it’s not looking into the kind of deal Intel cut with Washington, nor has that come up in discussions.
Intel (INTC), which is in the midst of a years-long turnaround effort, sold 10% of its business to the Trump administration as it seeks to stabilize its foundry and chip business. Intel continues to lose market share to rival AMD (AMD) and is seeing increased competition in the PC space from Arm-based competitors like Qualcomm (QCOM).
Nvidia will report earnings on Wednesday, Aug. 27.
Huang also touched on Nvidia’s opportunity in the networking space. The company groups its networking business under its Data Center segment. During Q2, Nvidia saw networking revenue of $7.2 billion, up 98% year over year.
“Just our ethernet product line grew to an annualized rate of $10 billion, and that’s just gotten started. Networking is going to be a very big part of our business. That’s fundamentally recognizing the fusion of computing, networking, and software,” Huang said.
