According to the Financial Times, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. The source, familiar with the matter, reportedly indicated that the meeting was planned some time ago but did not reveal the topics to be discussed. Given Nvidia’s current focus, it is likely that Huang and Trump will discuss U.S. AI policies.
U.S. AI policy is multifaceted, from domestic development of AI models and hardware to exporting AI hardware to other nations. As a result, Jensen Huang, who did not attend Trump’s inauguration, and newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump could discuss many topics.
The meeting comes after the Chinese startup DeepSeek made a major AI breakthrough, triggering a massive sell-off of AI-related stocks and wiping out a trillion dollars in market value. However, the Financial Times’s source stressed that the meeting was planned before DeepSeek introduced its R1 AI model.
DeepSeek has drawn attention to developing an advanced AI model while using significantly fewer computing resources than companies like Meta or OpenAI. The startup claims it spent $5.6 million training its V3 model using 2,048 Nvidia H100 AI GPUs. However, analysts estimate DeepSeek and its affiliate, hedge fund High-Flyer, have access to approximately 60,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs and have invested over $500 million in restricted hardware that was not supposed to be shipped to China.
Nvidia has long opposed expanding export restrictions, arguing that limiting sales of high-end chips to China would affect the sales of American companies and could backfire by encouraging Chinese firms to develop their semiconductor industry. To meet strict performance limitations for AI GPUs shipped to Chinese entities, Nvidia developed its H20 HGX —a cut-down version of the H100—that complies with current U.S. export regulations and does not require an export license from the Department of Commerce. However, rumors suggest that the Trump administration plans to restrict Nvidia’s H20 HGX GPU shipments to Chinese entities, which could cost Nvidia over $10 billion in annual sales.
Nvidia has not commented on Huang’s upcoming meeting with Trump.
