Huang Renxun, CEO of AI (artificial intelligence) chip giant Nvidia, recently visited Chinese Mainland to visit Nvidia's office staff in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and attend the annual meeting. At the annual meeting, Huang Renxun also performed in the Northeast Huayi. The performance video has sparked widespread dissemination on social media.
According to an insider from NVIDIA quoted by The Paper, Huang Renxun participated in the annual conference program and prepared different activities for the annual conferences in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. According to the video, Huang Renxun hosted a lottery at the meeting and even dressed in a "big flower vest" to perform the Northeast Errenzhuan with the employees on stage.
This is Huang Renxun's visit to Chinese Mainland after several years. In June last year, it was reported that Huang Renxun was going to visit Chinese Mainland and several enterprises, but he did not make the trip in the end.
However, Huang Renxun's itinerary this time did not involve any government meetings or major commercial releases, and the main purpose was to "enjoy a good time" with Chinese employees.
Obviously, China is a market that chip giants cannot miss. Nvidia stated that China is the company's third largest market, accounting for over one-fifth of its revenue. Nvidia has nearly 3000 employees in Chinese Mainland.
In the past two years, with the help of AI whirlwind and trillion yuan market value, the demand for Nvidia GPUs in the market has skyrocketed, driving Nvidia's leapfrog development. Throughout 2023, Nvidia's stock price rose nearly 240%, marking the largest annual increase since 2001. As of now, the stock price has reached a historic close to $600, with a market value of $1.47 trillion.
However, NVIDIA, with its limitless scenery, still struggles to conceal its "China anxiety".
Since 2022, the new semiconductor export control regulations introduced by the United States have restricted the export of multiple Nvidia products to China. Affected by policies, Nvidia's sales in China and other affected regions have significantly decreased. Meanwhile, with increasing concerns about the Chinese market, several analysts have lowered Nvidia's target price.
At the end of November 2023, Huang Renxun said at the DealBook Summit held by the New York Times that Chinese Mainland is still the largest chip market, and Nvidia hopes to continue to focus on the development of the Chinese market. Nvidia is currently developing specialized chips for the Chinese market, which will not violate US export control regulations.
However, recently, there have been rumors in the market that Nvidia's launch of upgraded computing power chips such as H20 in the Chinese market has cooled down. According to industry insiders, the overall computing power of HGX H20 chips specifically designed for China is about 80% lower than that of Nvidia's high-end chip H100 GPU, which is only about 20% of the overall computing power performance of H100. The performance is castrated, but the price is not much cheaper. Many Chinese customers have indicated to Nvidia that the number of chips ordered from Nvidia this year will be far less than the high-performance chips originally planned for Nvidia.
In the eyes of industry insiders, an important purpose of Huang Renxun's visit to China may be to stabilize his team and top clients. However, this speculation has not yet been confirmed by Nvidia.
In addition, although Nvidia is still a chip giant, its concerns about its competitors are increasing under the policy restrictions of the US government. American chip companies such as AMD, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Adeno are all increasing their presence in the Chinese market. Several companies have stated that they will continue to increase their research and development investment in the Chinese market, and will make China's increasingly developing smart electric vehicles one of the key areas of cooperation.
Moreover, as Huang Renxun himself said, the US semiconductor export restrictions on China have further stimulated China's determination to develop its independent semiconductor industry. At present, dozens of companies in Chinese Mainland are developing technologies that can compete with Nvidia's products, which is also detrimental to Nvidia's development in the Chinese market.
So, Nvidia's "China anxiety" is increasing day by day.
Article | Reporter Leng Shuang