Nvidia moves one step closer to a breakthrough on Chinese exports after reaching another milestone

By Jules Rimmer

Nvidia reaches $5.5 trillion market cap

Jensen Huang's last-minute addition to Air Force One Wednesday was seen by many investors as a signal that a license to sell his chips to China might be forthcoming. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Nvidia has clocked up another milestone with its stock-market capitalization reaching $5.5 trillion. The stock was moving higher again on Thursday after a report from Reuters that the U.S. Commerce Department had approved around ten Chinese companies to buy Nvidia's highly-advanced H200 chips.

In premarket trade, Nvidia stock rose 2% to $229.50.

Nvidia shares were buoyed Wednesday by optimism that chief executive Jensen Huang's last-minute inclusion in the U.S trade delegation to Beijing could indicate an important announcement in the offing. Investors were hoping a deal might be struck allowing the world's largest company access to the lucrative Chinese market for AI development and infrastructure buildout. Huang himself has estimated the overall size of the Chinese market could be $50 billion.

Export licenses for Nvidia's most powerful Blackwell AI chips don't appear to be under discussion at present, but negotiations about sales of the second-most sophisticated H200 chips have been taking place for several months.

Interviewed on a video link from China by CNBC Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was non-committal about whether the export licenses had been officially granted. Instead, he stated that there had been "a lot of back and forth on the matter." Email requests from MarketWatch for confirmation of the approval have not yet received replies from the U.S. Commerce Department or Nvidia.

Quizzed by reporters about H200 orders in between meetings in Beijing, Huang did not give a specific answer and merely said, he was there to support the president.

Reuters states that"around" ten Chinese companies including Tencent (HK:700), Alibaba (BABA) and ByteDance have been approved to buy them with the Commerce Department placing restrictions on the number of chips that can be bought and also seeking assurances that the chips would not be used for military purposes.

It hasn't just been the American side putting up obstacles, however. Beijing has also been reluctant to issue import licenses for the H200 chips because they would prefer to develop their own technologies and retain independence on homegrown products.

Reuters also says that a handful of distributors - including Lenovo (HK:992) and Foxconn (TW:2354) - for the H200 chips have been authorized to act as intermediaries and facilitate exports. The report also suggested that there is still resistance to the exports from hardline elements in both the U.S. and China, concerned about security breaches and creating either a technological vulnerability or dependence.

Huang's argument for a long time has been that if the U.S. doesn't approve sales of his chips, then the U.S. will lose out on a huge market opportunity that the Chinese will likely exploit themselves.

-Jules Rimmer

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-14-26 0720ET