Jensen Huang: US chip curbs on China backfired and cost Nvidia billions

Jensen Huang wants Washington to rethink its China playbook. The Nvidia CEO told Cryptobriefing that US restrictions on selling advanced chips to China were a strategic blunder, one that drained billions from his company and loosened its grip on a top-tier tech market. The clearest scoreboard: Nvidia's share of Chinese business has slid from around 95% to roughly 50%.

The bill shows up in Nvidia's own numbers. China made up just 9% of the chipmaker's fiscal 2026 revenue, well below its earlier weight. Nvidia also booked a $4.5 billion charge tied to its H20 chips, plus another $0.4 billion on H200 inventory commitments.

Huang's argument stretches past Nvidia's income statement. In his telling, the controls didn't stall China's semiconductor and AI push, they accelerated it. He named Huawei as the biggest winner, saying Chinese rivals turned more aggressive and Huawei posted a standout growth year as American chips got harder to source.

This isn't a fresh gripe. At Computex in May 2025, Huang branded US AI diffusion rules a failure. Those rules dictate how advanced AI tech spreads to other countries. He's stuck to the same line since: export limits lit a fire under China's homegrown chip and AI efforts rather than containing them.

The policy has friends on both sides of the aisle. US chip export controls started with early measures under the Trump administration and got significantly tighter under Biden. Huang has been careful not to say America should surrender its edge, arguing it should hold leadership in cutting-edge tech while still doing business in China.

For investors, the sharpest takeaway is structural: China is now a small slice of Nvidia's story at 9% of fiscal 2026 revenue, still meaningful but far from the juggernaut it once was. Huang is an interested party, since Nvidia gains directly from looser rules, but his share-shift figure gives the critique more heft than a routine corporate complaint.