NVDA H200 Sales to 10 Chinese Firms Approved; Jensen Huang Beijing Visit Signals Easing Export Controls

NVIDIA's stock hit an all-time high on May 14, 2026, becoming the first US public company to reach a USD 5.5 trillion market cap, after news broke that the US approved H200 advanced chip sales to Chinese firms. The approval of shipments to at least 10 Chinese companies is modest in absolute volume but massive in political and strategic symbolism. It signals that the Trump administration, despite hawkish rhetoric on trade, is willing to ease certain AI chip restrictions to facilitate diplomatic engagement with China.

Jensen Huang's presence in Beijing during the summit was not accidental. NVIDIA's CEO was photographed alongside President Trump and other business leaders, underscoring his role as a bridge between US tech and Chinese markets. NVIDIA has long argued that blanket AI chip export bans harm US competitiveness by ceding the global market to non-US suppliers. The H200 approval suggests the administration has heard this argument. The H200 is advanced but not NVIDIA's latest (the H100 and B100 remain restricted), so the compromise offers Beijing some capability improvement without compromising US security.

For NVIDIA, the approval validates its argument that engagement is more sustainable than decoupling. NVIDIA's Chinese revenues were severely curtailed under the Biden export controls, and the company has been investing heavily in China-specific chip variants (the 'L20' and 'L40S' lines) as workarounds. The H200 approval, even if limited to 10 companies, reinstates a pathway for higher-margin sales and could improve NVIDIA's China revenue outlook for 2026-2027. The USD 5.5T market cap reflects investor confidence that Huang's summit diplomacy will yield broader policy easing.

Skeptics caution that the H200 approval is politically contingent and could be reversed if US-China relations deteriorate or if Beijing is perceived to be using the chips for military AI applications. The geopolitical environment remains fragile, and a Taiwan crisis or escalation in the Iran war could reverse these gains overnight. Additionally, the H200 is sold to Chinese system integrators and cloud providers, not directly to the Chinese government, creating plausible deniability but also uncertainty about end-use tracking.