Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang’s first journey to mainland China in 4 years has been a goodwill gesture to the chip designer’s workers and shoppers within the nation, which stays a key market regardless of powerful US restrictions, analysts say.
Whereas Nvidia didn’t launch particulars of Huang’s itinerary, an individual acquainted with the state of affairs who requested to not be recognized, mentioned the agency invited a number of key distributors to its Beijing workplace for a get-together attended by Huang. A second particular person, who additionally requested anonymity, mentioned Huang didn’t have any personal conferences with Chinese language officers.
“Following 4 years of disruption from the pandemic, Jensen is resuming his annual custom of celebrating the Chinese language New 12 months with our native staff,” mentioned an Nvidia spokesperson, with out elaborating.
Xinbang, a Chinese language on-line media outlet that covers the semiconductor trade, reported that Huang visited Nvidia’s Beijing workplace on January 15, Shanghai on January 17 and Shenzhen on January 19, to attend annual conferences with native staff.
There have been no media stories of Huang assembly with Chinese language shoppers or authorities officers in the course of the journey, in distinction with latest visits by different high-profile US executives, comparable to Tesla founder Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner.
Nvidia chief visits China for first time in 4 years amid mainland market headwinds
Nvidia chief visits China for first time in 4 years amid mainland market headwinds
Video clips of Huang assembly Chinese language workers went viral on the mainland’s web in latest days. In a single clip, Huang, 60, was wearing a red-and-green flowered vest, dancing on stage with different performers.
In one other video, Huang drew a fortunate quantity from a lottery field and known as out the winner’s identify as “Hua Wei”, which sounds just like Chinese language telecommunications big Huawei Applied sciences, at present beneath powerful US commerce sanctions.
Huang’s go to comes as Nvidia is caught between US-China geopolitical hostilities. On the one hand, the mainland stays a very powerful market in Asia for Nvidia, contributing 20 to 25 per cent of income up to now a number of quarters.
However, the US authorities tightened chip export restrictions to China final October, blocking the mainland’s entry to graphics processing models (GPUs) that Nvidia had particularly designed for Chinese language shoppers in response to earlier curbs.
Yuyuantantian, a Chinese language social media account run by state tv, mentioned in an opinion piece on Tuesday that Huang’s go to “mirrored his concern about the potential of dropping the China market”.
“China’s synthetic intelligence (AI) sector is rising quickly and is main the world together with the US … Nvidia is aware of what’s at stake. Lack of the China market and Chinese language buyer information would imply a double hit for Nvidia,” it added.
Analysts mentioned Huang could have a tricky job within the short-run to shore up enterprise amid widening tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“Huang is attempting to make a goodwill gesture to the vital China market, though he doesn’t need to draw an excessive amount of consideration amid the present political setting,” mentioned Arisa Liu, a semiconductor analysis director on the Taiwan Institute of Financial Analysis.
Su Lian Jye, a chief analyst with analysis firm Omdia, mentioned whereas Huang’s journey was a pleasant gesture, it’s unlikely to resolve Nvidia issues within the Chinese language market.
As China pushes forward with its AI improvement, Nvidia GPUs have seen excessive ranges of demand from cloud providers shoppers comparable to Baidu, Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Submit.
Nonetheless, beneath an October replace to US commerce sanctions, Nvidia can not ship its main A800 and H800 chips to China-based prospects. As such, the US chip big has developed three new information centre GPUs – the H20, L20 and L2. Nonetheless, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has warned that Washington will take a dim view of any workaround options focused on the mainland.
