Nvidia CEO Huang Just Met With China’s Commerce Minister. Why the Stock Is Gaining.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao (JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images)

Nvidia stock rose on Friday after CEO Jensen Huang met with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao Thursday, in a sign it might deepen ties with China.

Shares were up 0.3% to $173.46, bringing weekly gains to 5.4%. If gains hold, it would be the fourth straight day of the stock closing at a new all-time high.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were both up 0.2%.

Following a bumpy first half of the year, Nvidia became the first company to ever close with a market capitalization over $4 trillion earlier this month. Shares are up 84% from a 52-week low of $94.31 on April 4 after President Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs.

On Thursday, Wang Wentao said that China’s market is huge and that he hoped that multinational companies including Nvidia would provide domestic customers with high-quality products, according to a translation of a government statement. Huang said the Chinese market is very attractive and that Nvidia is willing to deepen cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence, according to the statement.

It comes just days after the chip maker said it expects to soon be able to sell its H20 AI chip in China again, amid easing trade tension between the world’s two largest economies. Huang previously said the decision to effectively ban sales of the company’s H20 had a negative revenue impact of $10.5 billion in total across Nvidia’s April and July quarters.

Endorsement from the Chinese government could help Nvidia see off the challenge in the country from Huawei Technologies, which is marketing its own Ascend AI chips to customers including state-owned telecommunications carriers and private AI developers, such as TikTok’s parent ByteDance.

Attention is now set to earnings from technology companies, kicking off with Google-parent Alphabet on Wednesday. Google and its fellow major cloud computing companies are set to report second-quarter capital expenditure—driven by spending on AI data centers —of $99 billion, up 54% from the same period a year before, according to BofA Securities analysts. For this year overall, the analysts expect 42% growth in their capex to $397 billion.

Plenty of that money is expected to flow to Nvidia, to install its chips in new data centers. Nvidia is set to start shipping its latest GB300 AI server platform in volume from September, according to Taiwanese media outlet Digitimes, citing sources in the supply chain.

Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Write to Elsa Ohlen at elsa.ohlen@barrons.com and Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com