By Lingling Wei, Raffaele Huang and Amrith Ramkumar

Jensen Huang, chief executive of California-based chip designer Nvidia, worked for months behind the scenes in Washington and Beijing to protect tens of billions of dollars in future sales from the heated U.S.-China trade rivalry.

Huang told President Trump that restrictions on U.S. chip sales to China would backfire by pushing Chinese technology champions to achieve self-reliance. He advised the president to keep China hooked on American tech. As a sweetener, Huang said the company would invest as much $500 billion in the U.S.

Huang's argument, along with the half-trillion-dollar offer from the world's most valuable company, appeared to seal the deal.

The Trump administration decided last month to allow China to buy Nvidia's H20 artificial-intelligence chip, a surprising reversal that came shortly after Huang met with Trump. Nvidia had developed the H20 to comply with past export restrictions as a less powerful chip specially designed for China. The news sent Nvidia's stock up 4%, pushing its market capitalization further above the record $4 trillion mark.

Beijing reciprocated by allowing a $35 billion deal involving U.S. chip-software makers that it had held up for about a year. In a previously unreported development, Chinese officials also froze an inquiry into an already-completed Nvidia deal. With both moves, China's leaders hoped Huang would keep lobbying Washington for loosened export controls.

There was one last hitch.

At a meeting with Huang in the White House last week, Trump made one more demand -- that Nvidia give the federal government 20% of its chip sales to China in exchange for issuing the export licenses. "If I'm going to do that, I want you to pay us something," Trump said, recounting the exchange at a news conference Monday.

The unusual pay-to-play proposal, which hadn't been vetted by White House tech policy staff before Trump offered it, is expected to face legal and security questions.

Huang, facing a choice of paying for long-term access to a market vital to his company or walking away, countered with 15%.

He charmed Trump at the meeting, drawing the president a diagram showing how tariffs would be counterproductive for his goal of increasing U.S. chip production and signed it. Shortly after the meeting, Trump said he would exempt tech companies that invest in the U.S. from roughly 100% tariffs on semiconductor imports.

The Trump administration's decision to allow China access to the H20 chip appears a watershed moment in U.S. policy. In Trump's first term, as well as through President Biden's, the prevailing trend was generally tougher control on tech sales to China. National-security concerns often received greater weight in the past than business interests.

Many attribute the potential shift to Huang's lobbying effort.

The CEO has lavished praise on Trump and China, and the admiration is mutual.

On a July visit to Beijing, Huang hailed Chinese technological progress. Privately, a lieutenant to Chinese leader Xi Jinping told Huang that Beijing appreciated how Nvidia was contributing to the world's AI advances.

At a Washington AI summit in late July, Trump said he had looked at breaking up Nvidia because of its dominant market share. But that was before he got to know Huang and the industry. "What a job you've done," Trump told Huang, who was seated in the front row, surrounded by administration officials and industry executives.

"America's unique advantage that no country could possibly have is President Trump," Huang said at the summit.

As Elon Musk learned, winners in the Washington influence competition attract opponents. Lawmakers in both parties have challenged Huang, saying that if China gets Nvidia chips, China's AI companies could benefit, potentially aiding the Chinese military.

"These criticisms are misguided and inconsistent with the administration's AI action plan," an Nvidia spokesman said. "The H20 will not enhance anyone's military capabilities but will help America win the support of developers worldwide."

This account is based on interviews with current and former officials in both countries, people close to and working for Nvidia, as well as those familiar with Huang and his lobbying efforts.

"President Trump regularly talks to business leaders like Jensen Huang who are making historic investments in American manufacturing," White House spokesman Kush Desai said. "The only special interest guiding the president's decision-making is the best interest of the American people."

Into the fray

For years, Huang avoided the rough-and-tumble world of Washington politics, preferring to schmooze with the videogamers who were the original customers for his chips. The 62-year-old billionaire, a libertarian at heart, resisted the lobbying game, delegating the task to his lieutenants.

As Nvidia's chips became one of the world's most strategic commodities because of their role in AI, Washington remained a no-man's-land for the Silicon Valley company.

Huang didn't visit the White House or engage lawmakers meaningfully until 2023, when he joined the chief executives of Intel and Qualcomm to lobby against new curbs on tech sales to China by the Biden administration. Restrictions on chip exports to many countries friendly with the U.S. announced in the final days of Biden's term escalated the threat.

When Trump won a second term, Huang faced an administration stacked with China hawks, and the prospect of even tighter U.S. controls on tech exports. The company bashed the Biden administration's restrictions and warned the rules would benefit such Chinese competitors as Nvidia-rival Huawei. Nvidia hired former Trump national security adviser Robert O'Brien, co-founder of a consulting firm.

O'Brien helped communicate a sense of urgency regarding breakthroughs from DeepSeek and other Chinese AI companies, as well as chip advances by Huawei. Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who chairs an institute that promotes innovation, also carried the message.

In early April, when the White House was preparing to cut off H20 sales, Huang attended a $1 million-a-head dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He told the president that selling the chip in China wasn't a threat to national security. Huang also dangled an incentive: a promise to invest as much as half a trillion dollars worth of AI infrastructure and supercomputers in the U.S.

Huang thought he had made a persuasive case, and Trump announced the $500 billion investment.

After the dinner, a powerful rival intervened with a counterargument. Musk, still close to Trump at the time, had his own AI ambitions to consider. He told Trump that any advanced chip in Chinese hands threatened U.S. tech supremacy. That view, combined with opposition from national security-minded officials, persuaded Trump to impose the restriction Huang had tried to stop.

Huang had been outmaneuvered and didn't enjoy losing -- especially when, as he later said, $15 billion in sales were at stake.

Persuasive pitch

In early May, Huang spent about two hours with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a private discussion about the threat of Huawei and Chinese competitors and the need for Nvidia to have access to Chinese talent.

Later that month, the Trump administration said it was getting rid of the Biden rule limiting chip sales to many friendly countries after pushback from Huang and other industry executives.

Huang found a powerful ally at the White House -- the so-called AI czar, David Sacks. He shared the fear of ceding the advanced chip market to Chinese rivals. The two men drew the support of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees export controls and is well-acquainted with tech companies from his former career as a Wall Street dealmaker. All three championed a deal to send Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates in mid-May.

They later went to see Trump for an unannounced meeting at the White House on July 10. Huang told the president that tight restrictions on Nvidia would just give Huawei a leg up in the AI race. Nvidia needed to access the Chinese market and its AI talent, Huang said: Did the president really want to let China get all the spoils and turn American champions like Nvidia into losers?

Trump made his decision, which was announced days later when Huang was in Beijing. China could have the H20 chips as part of a broader trade detente.

China hawks who counted on Trump's support were appalled. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, wrote to Lutnick expressing "grave concern with the administration's abrupt and inexplicable decision." They said China's commercial AI advances, helped by Nvidia, were "quickly translating into a national security advantage for the People's Liberation Army."

Nvidia has played down concerns about large numbers of chips being diverted to China's military or other adversaries. Beijing would consider such a move risky because Washington could cut off access at any time, according to Huang. "They simply can't rely on it," He said in a TV interview in July.

'Magic Tailor'

Winning in Washington was only half the battle. Nvidia's market share in China fell to 50% from 95% over the past four years under U.S. restrictions, Huang said in May.

He visited China at least three times this year to reassure Chinese tech executives and government officials that Nvidia was committed to the market. The trips came when many U.S. executives shunned visits to Beijing or even being seen with Chinese tech titans. Huang has met with top executives of Chinese cloud-computing leader Alibaba, smartphone and automaker Xiaomi and OpenAI challenger MiniMax.

People in China's tech industry said they appreciated Huang's efforts to modify his chips so they could be sold in China. Engineers there nicknamed him "Magic Tailor" for his skill in designing chips to thread the needle of U.S. regulations.

Knowing the importance of the Chinese market to Nvidia, Beijing increased pressure on the company: China's cybersecurity regulator recently summoned Nvidia representatives to discuss alleged security risks of the H20 chips, citing comments by U.S. lawmakers about the need for a bill to require tracking capabilities for advanced chips sold abroad.

Huang and others in the industry have lobbied against the bill, which could face more opposition if it gains traction. The White House has said it wants to study chip tracking but hasn't weighed in on the legislation specifically.

Nvidia denied the H20 chip presented such security risks to Beijing.

While the H20 can't be used for creating large AI models, such as the ones powering ChatGPT and other chatbots, engineers say the chip is still good at "inference," the ability of AI programs to tap their training to answer user questions.

Since early this year, the H20 chip has played a critical role in filling sky-high demand for AI applications using open-source models such as Chinese-developed DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen -- especially since Chinese chip makers have had trouble stepping up production capacity. Chinese engineers say companies often get hooked on Nvidia's software, making them reluctant to switch to other companies.

That is setting the stage for a battle over Nvidia's next-generation chip that Huang is crafting for China. The company frames the new chip as another stripped-down variant, but it is based on the Blackwell architecture, which is Nvidia's most advanced on the market. Nvidia has begun sending samples to Chinese clients for testing.

"I hope to get more advanced chips into China than H20," the CEO said during his visit to Beijing. "Whatever we're allowed to sell in China will continue to get better and better."

On Monday, Trump said he was comfortable allowing H20 exports because the U.S. has much better chips. The most powerful Nvidia products wouldn't be approved for export unless they were modified for lower performance, he said.

Regarding the potential for Huang seeking to export versions of Nvidia's new chips to China, Trump said, "I think he's coming to see me again about that."

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com, Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com and Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 11, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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