NEW YORK, May 14, 2026, 17:04 EDT
Nvidia Corp. stock jumped Thursday, following U.S. approval for roughly 10 Chinese companies to purchase its H200 AI chips. Still, none of the chips have actually shipped, with the much-anticipated China sales opportunity hanging in limbo—caught between green lights from Washington and continued hesitation out of Beijing.
It’s a key moment as Chief Executive Jensen Huang visits Beijing alongside a U.S. delegation, with investors eager for signs Nvidia might claw back some China business ahead of its May 20 quarterly report. The company plans to break down fiscal first-quarter results next Wednesday; written comments from the CFO will land before the call.
The H200 acts as an AI accelerator, designed for handling the heavy lifting behind large AI models. Reuters says U.S. authorities have cleared sales to a handful of Chinese tech names—Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com. Distributors like Lenovo and Foxconn made the list, too. The cap: 75,000 chips per customer, as set by U.S. licensing.
Lenovo told Reuters it’s among a handful of firms cleared to offer H200 chips in China. Nvidia and several major Chinese tech players—Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com, along with Foxconn—stayed silent in response to Reuters’ queries. The U.S. Commerce Department wouldn’t comment.
Nvidia finished the day up 4.4% at $235.74, with shares reaching as high as $236.54 and pushing the company’s market cap to roughly $5.77 trillion. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched fresh record closes. According to Reuters, Nvidia’s rally lifted semiconductor stocks, though Qualcomm, Intel, Sandisk, and Micron still slipped.
Prediction-market traders are piling in ahead of next week’s earnings. On Polymarket, odds hit 97% that Nvidia will top non-GAAP EPS of $1.77 in its May 20 release, though the market’s volume stood at just $3,700. Elsewhere, traders put the chance of first-quarter adjusted gross margin landing in the 75% to 76% range at 70%.
Nvidia can’t shrug off China. Reuters put its grip on the country’s advanced-chip market at roughly 95% before U.S. export restrictions bit down. China was pulling in 13% of Nvidia’s sales, and CEO Jensen Huang figured the country’s AI market would reach $50 billion this year.
Nvidia’s core operations are still enormous. For the quarter ending Jan. 25, revenue hit a record $68.1 billion, climbing 73% year-over-year. Data-center revenue came in at $62.3 billion, and total revenue for the year reached $215.9 billion.
Execution’s the sticking point. According to Reuters, Chinese companies backed off following word from Beijing. At the same time, China is clamping down on foreign tech reliance and doubling down on domestic chip efforts—Huawei’s network of suppliers is a big part of this push.
The U.S. terms complicate things further. Reuters said the Trump administration’s deal hands Washington a 25% cut of chip-sale revenue and routes the chips through U.S. territory en route to China—a setup that’s sparked anxiety in Beijing over tampering or potential hidden backdoors.
Not everyone in Washington is thrilled about the news. Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations focused on China and emerging technologies, told Reuters that if Nvidia ships more chips to China, “fewer Nvidia chips for U.S. firms” could be the result, potentially shrinking America’s advantage in AI. Reuters
The competitive landscape keeps moving. Cerebras Systems, which designs AI chips and wants a slice of the GPU market, soared 89% above its IPO price in Thursday’s Nasdaq debut. Renaissance Capital’s Nicholas Smith told Reuters the valuation seemed “quite high even out to 2028.” Reuters
Wall Street appears unfazed by the China delay for now. C.J. Muse at Cantor Fitzgerald bumped his Nvidia target up to $350 from $300, according to TipRanks, pointing to demand outpacing supply and Nvidia’s edge versus AMD, Intel, and the field of custom AI chips.
Nvidia gets a boost with the approval, but it’s hardly the whole story. Now attention turns to whether those licenses actually translate into shipments—and, crucially, if shipments turn into revenue—before local Chinese players catch up further.
