Investors had been watching closely ahead of Nvidia's earnings report last Wednesday. The question was whether the chipmaker would finally stumble and spark talk of a bursting bubble, or keep its streak alive.
In the end, Nvidia posted another record quarter, with growth accelerating again. But the market still didn't reward it, largely because there's so much uncertainty right now.
According to Business Insider, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees on Thursday that the company had been stuck in what he called a lose-lose setup. A weak quarter, he said, would have fueled fears of an AI bubble. A strong quarter risked reinforcing the same narrative from the other direction. Huang went even further, suggesting the global economy was essentially leaning on Nvidia.
If we delivered a bad quarter, if we're off by just a hair, if it just looked a little bit creaky, the whole world would've fallen apart. There's no question about that, OK? You should've seen some of the memes that are on the internet. Have you guys seen some of them? We're basically holding the planet together — and it's not untrue.
US weighs allowing Nvidia to sell H200 chips in China for the first time
Looking ahead, Nvidia could see another lift to future revenue. The Trump administration is now weighing whether to let the company sell its H200 AI chips in China, Reuters reports, a move that would mark a major shift in US export policy. Until now, H200 has never been approved for sale to Chinese customers under existing export controls.
People familiar with the talks say the Commerce Department is reviewing whether to ease its current restrictions, though they caution that nothing is final. The review comes as US-China relations warm slightly after last month's trade and tech truce between President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping. At the same time, there remains widespread concern in Washington about strengthening China's military capabilities by supplying advanced semiconductors.
The H200, introduced two years ago, has more high-bandwidth memory than Nvidia's H100 and can process data faster. It's estimated to deliver roughly twice the performance of the H20, the most advanced chip Nvidia can currently export to China after the Trump administration reversed a short-lived ban earlier this year.
