In a move that’s shaken both tech and political circles, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made an unannounced visit to Beijing this week, just days after the U.S. government imposed stricter export controls on the company’s AI chips bound for China. Huang, invited by a Chinese trade body, met with Ren Hongbin of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and expressed hope for continued cooperation with China.

The visit, covered widely by Chinese state media, including China Daily and CCTV, marks Huang’s second high-profile trip to the capital in recent months. It also coincides with a critical moment for Nvidia, as the U.S. restricts sales of its H20 datacenter GPUs—products designed specifically to comply with earlier sanctions. The latest crackdown could cost Nvidia $5.5 billion in revenue, contributing to a 7% dip in its stock value on Wednesday.

Adding further intrigue, Huang reportedly met with Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek—an AI startup that stunned the tech world in January with a shockingly advanced chatbot developed on a shoestring budget. U.S. lawmakers have since raised national security concerns about whether DeepSeek obtained restricted Nvidia chips.

Despite escalating geopolitical tensions and deepening scrutiny from Washington, Huang has reaffirmed Nvidia’s global ambitions. “We’ll balance legal boundaries with technological progress—and keep moving AI forward,” said the Taiwan-born tech leader. Meanwhile, Nvidia has pledged to build up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S., a move the White House lauded as the “Trump effect in action.”

As global markets reel from Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy and international negotiations accelerate, Huang’s Beijing visit underscores the delicate tightrope Nvidia—and the entire semiconductor industry—must walk in this new era of tech nationalism.