Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last week that the company’s share of China’s advanced AI accelerator market has collapsed from roughly 95% to zero as US export controls continue to bite. The comment came during a live interview at Citadel Securities’ Future of Global Markets 2025 event in New York on October 6, in which Huang said, “At the moment, we are 100% out of China,” adding, “We went from 95% market share to 0%.”
A full video of the interview was published on YouTube this week by Citadel Securities and marks the first time Nvidia has publicly quantified the scale of its retreat. Huang didn’t name specific products, but his remarks point squarely to Nvidia’s data center GPU line, which has faced rolling waves of export restrictions since October 2022. The company’s China-focused A800 and H800 parts were rendered noncompliant by export prohibitions in 2023, while a newer design — the H20 — has faced licensing hurdles of its own.
“I can’t imagine any policymaker thinking that’s a good idea, that whatever policy we implemented caused America to lose one of the largest markets in the world to 0%,” Huang said of the outcome.
Nvidia has previously disclosed that China represented between 20% and 25% of its data center revenue — a segment that generated more than $41 billion in its most recent financial results, representing a 56% year-over-year increase. While that figure includes cloud customers across a wide range of workloads, AI infrastructure remains the company’s growth engine. A prolonged clampdown could reshape both demand and supply chains.
The US government has tightened controls over AI accelerators sold to China as part of a broader strategy to limit Beijing’s access to cutting-edge semiconductors. But Huang’s comments highlight how quickly the dynamic has shifted on the ground. “In all of our forecasts… we’re assuming 0% for China,” he said. “If anything happens in China… it will be a bonus.”
Nvidia’s cautious guidance comes amid signs of deeper fragmentation in the AI stack. China’s hyperscalers and AI labs have increasingly turned to domestic silicon or alternative hardware in response to the export curbs, accelerating efforts to localize compute infrastructure. That’s a trend Huang flagged earlier this year, when he warned that blanket restrictions could spur the development of competitive substitutes.
While Huang said that he has hopes that Nvidia’s business can return to China in the future, the company has effectively written off the country for the moment.
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