From a virtual unknown in Washington, Jensen Huang scored a lobbying victory this week that could bring billions of dollars to the company he runs: Nvidia.
The White House’s decision to allow exports of advanced chips to the vast Chinese market, largely brokered by Huang, has left competitors wondering how the low-key electrical engineer ingratiated himself with the U.S. president.
On Monday, Donald Trump, who had previously admitted to having “never heard of” Nvidia or Huang, defied opposition within his own Make America Great Again coalition by allowing the semiconductor maker to sell its H200 chips to China, with the United States accepting a 25 percent cut.
A person familiar with the company’s strategy said “one actor recognizes another” to explain the president’s new sympathy for Huang, because both have the same management style.
The $4 trillion company’s success in courting the US president is particularly notable because, until recently, Nvidia was virtually non-existent in Washington when it came to lobbying.
Huang, who was not a regular at the capital before this year, was initially skeptical about the value of courting Trump after his re-election in November, said a person familiar with Nvidia’s strategy.
According to him, the Nvidia CEO feared Trump’s unpredictability. Others say Huang was simply evaluating how best to help the government understand the U.S. artificial intelligence sector.
While billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, were rushing to attend Trump’s inauguration in January, Huang was celebrating Chinese New Year with employees in his native Taiwan, 8,000 miles away.
His initial access to the president was brokered by Howard Lutnick, the US Commerce Secretary. “(Lutnick) started the conversation with, ‘Jensen…I just want you to know that you’re a national treasure, Nvidia is a national treasure. And any time you need access to the president, to the administration, call us,'” Huang told Joe Rogan’s podcast, famous for his far-right alignment, this month. “And it was true…they (were) always available.”
But the company was drawn deeper into politics when the White House restricted sales to China of its H20 chips, those most used in advanced models of artificial intelligence, as part of the broader trade conflict between Trump and Beijing.
Understanding that the US president wanted companies to commit to expanding production domestically, Nvidia quickly joined a consortium that promised to invest $500 billion domestically over the next four years.
Huang flew to Mar-a-Lago in April to chat with Trump at a million-dollar-per-person dinner. The Republican government softened its position in the following months.
In addition to meeting with Trump privately at least six times this year and speaking with him directly by phone, Huang has accompanied the president on trips to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
He was in the spotlight at the White House AI Action Plan Summit in July, where he received glowing praise from Trump. “What a job you did, man,” the president praised.
In October, Huang helped lead the president’s design of a ballroom at the White House.
Simultaneously, Nvidia’s CEO began courting lawmakers. Huang argued that blocking American technology from Chinese AI developers would not hinder their progress, but would encourage Chinese chipmakers to catch up.
In May, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Nvidia’s absence in the Asian country meant “competitors like Huawei (are) already taking over.”
Nvidia teams in China have done their own research on chip manufacturing competitors.
Nvidia declined to comment on its lobbying efforts.
The company’s defense on Capitol Hill was led by Tim Teter, the company’s attorney and general counsel, who became one of Huang’s most trusted advisers.
Unlike many of its competitors, Nvidia presented its arguments directly, largely avoiding established lobbyists and industry associations. He quickly assembled an in-house team and hired a Republican lobbyist who had worked for Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
A Washington-based lobbyist said Huang has increased his presence, including creating a larger team of lobbyists.
Huang’s efforts remained focused on chip exports. Nvidia’s primary role as a hardware supplier — rather than a model builder like OpenAI — meant it didn’t have to account for job losses from AI or harm to children’s mental health, three people familiar with the discussions on Capitol Hill said.
However, his campaign faced major obstacles. Many national security officials disagree with Nvidia’s arguments for selling chips to China, as do researchers at prominent Washington think tanks.
Trump revealed in July that when he first heard about Nvidia’s huge market share, his instinct had been to break up the company.
Steve Bannon, a strategist in the first Trump administration and influential in the Maga camp, criticized the deal this week, saying the president was “misguided” and criticized Republicans for not speaking out.
Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have denounced Huang for meeting primarily with Republicans, a sign that the company could face more opposition if Trump loses his majority in the House or Senate after the November 2026 midterm elections.
An initial agreement to reopen exports of the H20 chip – for which Nvidia had to agree to give the United States a 15% share – was complicated by Beijing’s resistance to these less advanced products.
Nvidia’s attention then turned to efforts to get the White House to authorize the sale of H200 chips to China, which are more advanced than the H20, although still behind the company’s latest generation.
Ultimately, Huang convinced management that it was in America’s best interest for Nvidia to maintain its dominance by selling its products as widely as possible.
Robert O’Brien, a former Trump national security adviser who helped Nvidia hone its messaging in Washington, said that “the U.S. domestic market, as big as it is, is not big enough to absorb all the chips” from Nvidia and its rivals, including Intel and AMD, “and keep them leaders in the game.”
But Nvidia has its critics in Washington. Republican Senator Dave McCormick is one of them and said he was “concerned” by the H200 decision.
A measure in a defense funding bill that would have restricted its ability to sell advanced chips to China was dropped this week. But a bipartisan bill aimed at blocking the administration from approving sales of Nvidia chips is gaining traction in Congress, particularly among those who fear the administration will one day approve sales of the company’s flagship chips, Blackwell, to the Asian country.
For now, Trump’s support for Huang’s position has led many Republican lawmakers, who have called for stricter export controls under President Joe Biden, to remain silent.
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