By Wen-Yee Lee and Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI, May 23 (Reuters) – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Saturday that his forecast of a $200 billion market for CPUs includes China, signalling Nvidia still sees significant long-term demand in the market amid ongoing U.S.-China technology tensions.
Central processing units have taken centre stage as companies and businesses gravitate towards agentic AI – systems that perform autonomous functions – broadening demand beyond graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are used to train large models.
Huang on Wednesday aimed to assure investors that the world’s most valuable company can keep up its blockbuster growth with the help of a broad base of customers and that new products will help it beat the $1 trillion in sales it has forecast for its flagship AI chips.
During an earnings call on Wednesday, Huang said Nvidia’s new “Vera” central processors give it access to a new $200 billion market.
Speaking to reporters upon arrival in Taipei on Saturday and asked if that forecast included China, he said: “I would think so.”
H200 CHIPS
Nvidia has received licenses from the U.S. government to sell its H200 chips but has not received approval from Chinese officials who are fostering China’s own chip suppliers.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this month produced no immediate breakthrough for Nvidia to sell H200 chips. Huang was also there as part of the U.S. delegation.
Reuters reported last week that the U.S. has cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far.
“H200 has been licensed to ship to China. It would be terrific to be able to serve that market. The Chinese market is very important. It’s very large, of course,” Huang said, speaking at Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport.
TAIWAN SUPPLY CHAIN
Huang is in Taipei ahead of next month’s Computex trade show.
AMD said on Thursday it would invest more than $10 billion in Taiwan’s AI sector to deepen strategic partnerships and expand its capacity to build and assemble advanced AI chips.
Asked whether Nvidia had also invested in Taiwan’s supply chain or planned to do so, Huang said: “We haven’t announced anything in the past, but we’ve invested in and supported our partners here far more than that.”
He said he would also meet with TSMC while in Taiwan, the world’s largest contract chipmaker which makes many of the advanced semiconductors powering the trend towards AI.
He added that Nvidia is ramping up production of its Vera Rubin platform, which combines the company’s Vera CPU and Rubin GPU architectures, making for “a very busy second half” for Taiwan’s supply chain.
CHIP SMUGGLING
Taiwanese prosecutors said on Thursday they were investigating three people suspected of illegally exporting high-end AI servers made by Super Micro and containing Nvidia chips which are subject to U.S. export controls.
Asked what more Nvidia could do to prevent the diversion of AI chips, CEO Huang said the company was “very rigorous” in explaining laws and regulations to its partners and insisted they comply with all applicable rules.
“Ultimately, Super Micro has to run their own company,” he said. “I hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and avoid that from happening in the future.”
In March, the U.S. Justice Department charged three people associated with Super Micro, including its co-founder, with helping smuggle at least $2.5 billion of U.S. AI technology to China in violation of export laws.
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee and Ben BlanchardEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Susan Fenton)
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