Nvidia says China is included in $200B CPU market estimate

Nvidia said on May 23 that China is included in the $200 billion central processing unit market opportunity it outlined to investors earlier in the week, even as the company remains constrained by U.S.-China technology restrictions. CNBC reported that CEO Jensen Huang made the comment in Taipei when asked whether the forecast covered China. The remark came three days after Nvidia’s May 20 earnings release, when Huang told investors that the company’s new Vera CPUs give it access to a new $200 billion market. Nvidia’s latest quarterly report showed revenue of $81.6 billion for the quarter ended April 26, up 85% from a year earlier. ### What exactly did Huang say in Taipei? Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on May 23 that China was part of the estimate. Asked whether the $200 billion CPU forecast included China, Huang replied, “I would think so,” according to CNBC. He also said, “The Chinese market is very important. It’s very large, of course,” speaking at Songshan airport in Taipei. (cnbc.com) CNBC reported that Huang made the remarks after Nvidia’s earnings call on May 20, when he used the company’s new CPU line to argue that Nvidia still has room to expand beyond its core GPU franchise. The company has spent the past several years dominating AI training hardware with graphics processors, while pitching newer products that combine CPUs, GPUs and networking for large-scale AI systems. (cnbc.com) ### Where did the $200 billion figure come from? Nvidia said on its May 20 earnings call that Vera central processors open a $200 billion market for the company, according to CNBC’s account of the call. The figure was part of Huang’s broader case to investors that new products can extend Nvidia’s growth runway as customers build more AI infrastructure. (cnbc.com) Nvidia’s March 16 product announcement described Vera as a CPU built for data processing, AI training and agentic inference at scale. The company said customers collaborating on Vera deployments include Alibaba, ByteDance, Meta and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and said manufacturing partners include Dell Technologies, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro. (cnbc.com) ### Why does China matter here if export controls are still in place? CNBC reported that Nvidia has received U.S. licenses to sell H200 chips to China, but deliveries have not begun because Chinese approval has not been secured. Reuters, cited by CNBC, previously reported that around 10 Chinese firms had been cleared by the U.S. side to buy H200 chips, though no shipments had been completed. (investor.nvidia.com) Nvidia’s own filings show how material China-related restrictions have been. In its first-quarter fiscal 2026 results last year, the company said the U.S. government informed it on April 9, 2025, that a license was required for exports of H20 products to China, prompting a $4.5 billion charge tied to excess inventory and purchase obligations. (cnbc.com) ### Is this about CPUs replacing Nvidia’s GPU business? Nvidia’s May 20 earnings release still showed the company overwhelmingly driven by data center products tied to AI infrastructure. Data Center revenue reached $75.2 billion in the latest quarter, while total revenue was $81.6 billion. Huang said in that release that “agentic AI has arrived” and that Nvidia was positioned across cloud, frontier models and edge systems. (investor.nvidia.com) Nvidia’s March and January product announcements show the company pairing Vera CPUs with its Rubin GPU platform rather than presenting CPUs as a standalone replacement. The company described the Rubin generation as a tightly integrated system spanning CPU, GPU, networking and switching components for AI factories. (investor.nvidia.com) ### What should investors watch next? Computex in Taipei is scheduled for next month, and CNBC reported Huang was in the city ahead of the trade show. Nvidia’s investor site also lists June 26, 2026, as the payment date for its newly increased quarterly dividend, with June 4 as the record date. (investor.nvidia.com) Nvidia’s next formal update on China sales is likely to come through future earnings materials, SEC filings or public conference appearances posted on its investor relations site. The company’s May 20 event page says investors should monitor its investor website, press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts for material information. (investor.nvidia.com) (cnbc.com)