Nvidia's $108.0 billion forecast assumes zero China data center revenue

Nvidia's forecast for $108.0 billion in fiscal third-quarter revenue, issued in late August, came with an unusual footnote: the company assumes no Data Center compute revenue from China. That zero is not just a conservative accounting choice; it reflects a series of events that have effectively closed the world's second-largest economy to Nvidia's most important chips. In April 2025, the U.S. government required a license to export even the H20 chip designed for China, leading to a $4.5 billion charge. By last October, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia's share of China's AI chip market had dropped from about 95% to zero. Before the limits, China accounted for roughly a fifth to a quarter of the company's data center revenue.

Starting in February, the U.S. began issuing licenses for small quantities of H200 chips to particular Chinese customers, but sales remained tiny. Beijing limited purchases, Chinese demand waned, and Nvidia took a $400 million charge on excess H200 inventory. The quarterly filing notes only a fraction of allowed shipments have been made, and each H200 bound for China clears a U.S. inspection and carries a 25% tariff the company has not passed along. Chips have begun moving, with ByteDance and Tencent reportedly taking about 10,000 units apiece during the summer, but Nvidia says it still cannot deliver a competitive data center product for broad distribution in China under current rules.

The upcoming Sept. 24 White House meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping, with AI on the agenda, has raised speculation about eased chip restrictions. However, export controls on advanced AI chips were not on the agenda for preparatory AI safety talks, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Even a return to prior H20 sales volumes would add only about $7 billion, or roughly 7% on top of the current forecast, and the previous share of data center revenue would be worth almost $20 billion a quarter on today's base. Yet Chinese competitors have filled the gap, Beijing pushes domestic chips, and buyers may not rush back. The investment case, the author argues, holds without any China reopening, and whatever the summit adds would be a bonus.