The chief executive of the American chip maker Nvidia visited Beijing on Thursday, days after the US on sales of the only AI chip it was still allowed to sell to China.
Jensen Huang’s surprise visit was on the invitation of a trade organisation, according to a social media account affiliated with state media.
The official broadcaster China Central Television said Huang met Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, where he said he hopes “to continue to cooperate with China”.
China Daily, the ruling Communist party’s official English-language outlet, published a photo of Huang in the capital, saying the trip came “three months after pledging to continue cooperation with #China during his last visit”. It added the hashtag #OpportunityChina, which it has previously used in posts promoting US-China exports.
The visit caps a tumultuous week for Nvidia. The US restrictions, announced on Tuesday, apply to shipments of its H20 datacentre GPUs, a lower-powered version of other Nvidia chips, which was designed specifically to comply with Biden-era restrictions on sales to China.
The US government, which is battling China in the race for AI supremacy, told Nvidia the new rules were designed to address the risk that its products might be “used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China”.
The company has said the new controls will cost it $5.5bn (£4.2bn) in earnings. Shares of the company slumped about 7% on Wednesday.
