U.S. President Donald Trump (left) and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (right) [Reuters Yonhap News]

There is speculation that the supply of H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China may be seeing the green light, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang belatedly joined U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to China.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 12th (local time) that Huang, who did not board Air Force One, the U.S. president's official plane, when it took off, boarded Air Force One in Alaska.

Huang was not included in the initial list of business leaders visiting China released by the White House, so he did not accompany Air Force One when it departed from Joint Base Andrews near Washington D.C.

However, it is reported that President Trump directly called Huang after seeing media reports that the NVIDIA CEO was not on board Air Force One and requested him to join.

Huang subsequently traveled to Alaska and boarded Air Force One.

Later, President Trump announced on social media, "Jensen is currently on Air Force One."

He praised Huang as "the great Jensen Huang" and stated, "I will ask President Xi Jinping to open up the Chinese market so these brilliant talents can do their work."

The White House had previously announced that 16 prominent American business leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who are pursuing business expansion in China, would accompany the president on his visit to China for the summit with China, but Huang's name was excluded.

Huang has been actively persuading the U.S. and Chinese governments regarding the permission to sell NVIDIA's advanced AI chips in China.

NVIDIA [Reuters=Yonhap News]

The Trump administration had, in principle, blocked the export of high-performance chips like the H200 to China. However, late last year, it announced a partial easing of regulations by imposing a condition that NVIDIA would pay 25% of its profits as a fee.

However, the Chinese government has maintained its "technological self-reliance" stance, encouraging the use of domestic chips, and has been delaying approval for its companies to purchase the H200.

NVIDIA had been waiting for licenses from both the U.S. and Chinese governments for months, and Reuters reported in March that following U.S. approval, Chinese authorities had approved the purchase of H200 chips by multiple Chinese companies.

Prior to this, Huang had stated at a press conference for 'GTC 2026' that NVIDIA had received purchase orders from multiple Chinese companies and was in the process of resuming production of H200 for export.

The market had anticipated that the supply of AI chips to China would resume within a limited scope following approval from the Chinese authorities.

With increased expectations for AI chip supply due to Huang's visit to China, related stock prices in the Chinese stock market rose significantly on the day, with the Shanghai Composite Index reaching its highest point since July 2015.

However, some in the U.S. political sphere have raised concerns that the export of NVIDIA's advanced AI chips to China could pose a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, although there was no official explanation for why Air Force One made a stop in Alaska, Alaska has been used as an intermediate stop on numerous occasions during past presidential visits to Asian countries.