Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Calls Trump’s China Chip Ban ‘Deeply Painful,’ Says It Cost $15B In Sales

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called President Donald Trump’s ban on advanced chip sales to China “deeply painful” and “enormously costly.”

In an interview with technology analyst Ben Thompson, following the conclusion of his keynote speech at the Computex 2025 trade show in Taiwan, Huang highlighted that Nvidia expects to report $5.5 billion in write-offs in its first-quarter results, scheduled to be declared on May 28.

“No company in history has ever written off that much inventory, so this additional ban on Nvidia’s H20 is deeply painful,” he said.

Terming the Chinese chip market as equivalent to Boeing, the company, not one of its aircraft, Huang underscored the region's importance to Nvidia’s top and bottom lines.

“We walked away from $15 billion of sales and probably — what is it? — $3 billion worth of taxes,” he added.

Huang did not mince his words, either. He explained that the U.S. government’s attempts to slow down China’s innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors would eventually be unfruitful.

“Anybody who thought that one chess move to somehow ban China from H20s would somehow cut off their ability to do AI is deeply uninformed,” he said.

Huang noted that half of the world’s AI researchers are Chinese and they are “world-class.”

“You're not going to hold them back, you're not going to stop them from advancing AI.”

The export controls on Nvidia’s advanced AI chips began under the Biden administration, which brought the company’s A100 and H100 chips to its ban list in August 2022.

In the following months, Nvidia announced China-specific chips, but the Biden administration banned those, too.

Huang also called Huawei a formidable company. Huawei is currently at the center of a dispute between the U.S. and China after the Trump administration’s Commerce Department issued guidance last week, singling out the company.

Nvidia’s stock was down 0.08% at the time of writing.

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