Jensen says Nvidia now has 'zero percent' market share in China — says US export policy 'has already largely backfired'

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Market Share Decline in China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the company’s market share of AI accelerators in China has now dropped to 0 %. This is a stark contrast to the company’s position just about two years ago, when it held a lion’s share of China’s AI accelerator market—see the earlier analysis on the shift in market share here.

Interview Highlights

In an interview with the Special Competitive Studies Project (a bipartisan initiative by American lawmakers focused on long‑term U.S. competitiveness), Huang stated:

“In China, we have now dropped to zero. Conceding an entire market the size of China probably does not make a lot of strategic sense, so I think that has already largely backfired. Maybe it made sense at the time, but the policy really needs to be dynamic and stay with the times. It would be fairly safe to say that having American chip companies and other companies in China makes a lot of sense.”

The full interview can be viewed on YouTube watch here.

Analyst Estimates

Earlier this year, Bernstein projected that Nvidia’s share of China’s AI GPU market could fall from 66 % in 2024 to roughly 8 % in the coming years. The decline is attributed to:

• U.S. government export restrictions.
• Rapid growth of domestic vendors, which are expected to cover up to 80 % of demand.

Huang noted that the impact on Nvidia’s direct sales to Chinese customers occurred later than these estimates suggested.

Rise of Local Competition

Chinese developers are increasingly turning to home‑grown hardware solutions. Notable companies advancing both silicon and software include:

• Huawei
• Cambricon
• Moore Threads
• MetaX

While local firms are closing the gap in hardware, the CUDA ecosystem—often described as Nvidia’s “moat”—remains a significant advantage for American AI technology in China, and it has yet to be fully replicated by domestic competitors.