Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun suddenly visited China。

In the past two days, a group of photos of Huang Renxun dancing in a "flower vest" and video clips have been circulated on the Internet.。According to the caption, this is a clip of Huang Renxun performing at the China Annual Conference。It is rumored that Huang Renxun visited Nvidia's offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China, and attended the company's annual meeting.。At the annual meeting, Huang not only performed in person, but also gave cash red envelopes to employees who won the lottery.。

Subsequently, Huang Renxun's China trip was confirmed by Nvidia.。The visit is Huang's first to mainland China in a few years, so it's particularly interesting。

It is understood that Huang's last public trip to China dates back to 2019, when Huang went to Suzhou to attend the Nvidia GTC conference and gave a two-hour speech.。Previously, Huang Renxun also had the habit of inspecting offices around China at the end of the year, but this "tradition" was interrupted by the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020.。

As the AI boom swept the world last year, Nvidia was in the limelight as a global chip giant.。In order to accelerate the pace of AI, many Chinese technology companies have also taken a fancy to Nvidia's chips.。At the same time, the United States has further tightened chip export restrictions, Nvidia's "China-specific version of the chip" - A800 and H800 are also on the new export restrictions list, the new export restrictions came into effect in October last year.。

Before the new rules came into effect, Huang Renxun was rumored to be visiting China in June and will meet with executives from Tencent, ByteDance and other companies, as well as rumors that he will be traveling with car makers such as Ideal, BYD and Xiaomi.。But in the end Huang Renxun still didn't finalize the itinerary, and his trip to China just went away.。

After half a year, Huang Renxun suddenly flashed up in mainland China, surprising the outside world.。However, Nvidia said that Huang's trip did not involve meetings with government officials or major commercial announcements, and that its main purpose was to "have a good time" with Chinese employees.。A Beijing employee of Nvidia said in an interview that Huang Renxun is mainly here to comfort everyone and pay New Year's greetings to employees。Currently, Nvidia employs nearly 3,000 people in mainland China。

Interestingly, there was also a rather dramatic scene in the draw at this Nvidia annual meeting。Huang Renxun drew an employee named "Huawei" in the lottery, a coincidence that made everyone laugh and cry.。

At this stage, as Nvidia is subject to new U.S. chip export restrictions, local manufacturers such as Huawei are beginning to eat into Nvidia's market share in China。Two months ago, Baidu was rumored to have ordered 1,600 Huawei Sundance 910B AI chips for its 200 servers to replace NVIDIA chips.。The total value of this order is about 4.500 million yuan, about 61.83 million U.S. dollars。Although this order is relatively small。But the meaning behind it is extraordinary.。The source said that this indicates that some domestic Chinese technology companies may gradually abandon Nvidia and switch to domestic chips.。

Moreover, Nvidia's new "low-profile" chips under the new regulations are not very popular with Chinese companies.。It has been reported that large Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance have indicated to Nvidia after testing that the number of chips ordered from them this year will be far less than the Nvidia high-performance chips they had planned to buy.。

On the one hand, the latest version of the chip provided by Nvidia to Chinese companies is degraded again on the basis of the previous performance degradation version, and the performance has been greatly weakened.。In this case, Nvidia's chips have been difficult to pull a big gap with domestic chips.。On the other hand, even if the use of Nvidia chips in the future there is still a "cut-off" risk, and domestic chips are obviously much more "safe."。At present, some Chinese companies are adjusting their chip supply sources to make them more diversified.。

Previously, in its third-quarter 2023 earnings report, Nvidia had projected a significant decline in data center revenue from China and other affected regions in the fourth quarter of 2023.。In the past quarter, revenue from restricted countries and regions such as China accounted for about 20-25% of Nvidia's data center revenue.。

Therefore, in the eyes of many people, Huang Renxun's important purpose of this trip to China is to stabilize the Chinese team and head customers.。However, judging from the current response from Nvidia, Huang Renxun's trip may only be true if he stabilizes the Chinese team.。As for how Nvidia will handle its relationship with Chinese customers, it needs to be seen again.。