NVIDIA Currently Has No Solution to Offer to China, Leaving the Company in a Difficult Position
The ongoing situation for NVIDIA in China has reached a critical point. During his appearance at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets 2025 event, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang openly acknowledged that his company’s market share in China’s AI sector has fallen from nearly complete dominance to virtually nothing. According to Huang, NVIDIA currently has no AI solutions available to sell to Chinese clients, effectively leaving the company without a presence in what was once one of its largest and most lucrative markets.
Huang’s comments were direct and sobering:
“At the moment, we are 100% out of China, and so China is 0%. We went from a 95% market share to 0%, and so I can’t imagine any policymaker thinking this is a good idea. In all our forecasts, we assume zero for China. If anything happens in China, it will be a bonus.”
These remarks reflect a deep sense of frustration as NVIDIA faces mounting challenges from U.S. export restrictions and China’s accelerating shift toward domestic AI hardware development. Once a cornerstone of NVIDIA’s global revenue, the Chinese AI market has effectively become inaccessible due to stringent U.S. export controls on high-performance computing hardware, including GPUs used for advanced AI training.
NVIDIA’s near-total retreat from China represents a dramatic reversal of fortune. The company once commanded approximately 95% of China’s AI accelerator market, supplying major Chinese technology giants with GPUs that powered everything from cloud AI training systems to large-scale data centers. However, escalating geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing have significantly limited NVIDIA’s ability to sell its most advanced products, including the A100, H100, and even the previously China-specific H20 GPU.
The U.S. government’s ongoing export restrictions, aimed at curbing China’s access to high-end semiconductors, have forced NVIDIA to halt shipments of several flagship AI chips. As a result, Chinese firms have turned inward, investing heavily in homegrown AI chip development to reduce dependency on U.S. suppliers.
The vacuum left by NVIDIA’s absence has created new opportunities for local players such as Huawei and Cambricon Technologies, both of which are rapidly advancing their AI hardware capabilities. Huawei has already begun positioning itself to compete directly with NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin rack-scale AI lineup, unveiling its own advanced AI accelerator roadmap designed to support large-scale model training and data center operations.
Meanwhile, Cambricon continues to refine its AI inference and training chip architectures, positioning itself as another key competitor in the domestic AI landscape. With strong government backing and a renewed focus on self-reliance, Chinese semiconductor firms are now pushing to establish an independent ecosystem that rivals the technological prowess of NVIDIA’s CUDA platform.
For NVIDIA, the loss of the Chinese AI market represents a significant strategic setback. China accounts for an estimated 20–25% of global demand for AI computing hardware, and the inability to serve that region not only limits revenue potential but also affects long-term influence over the global AI infrastructure.
Huang’s remarks at the Citadel Securities conference highlight the gravity of the situation. The company is now adjusting its forecasts to exclude any contributions from China entirely, with Huang admitting that any renewed activity in the region would be “a bonus.” This reflects a realistic but cautious stance as NVIDIA navigates an increasingly complex geopolitical environment.
Despite these challenges, NVIDIA continues to dominate the AI hardware sector in most global markets, with soaring demand from hyperscale data centers, enterprise AI deployments, and generative AI startups driving record revenues. However, losing direct access to China may accelerate the development of regional alternatives, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape for years to come.
With China rapidly building its own AI ecosystem and NVIDIA locked out of the market by policy restrictions, the question now is not just whether the company can re-enter China, but whether the country will even need it when that opportunity arises.
What are your thoughts on NVIDIA’s current situation in China? Do you believe the company can eventually find a way back into this critical market, or has the shift to domestic AI solutions already gone too far?
