Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang decries US export curbs but says he trusts Trump

During Nvidia’s first-quarter earnings call, Jensen Huang commented on the Trump administration’s impact on his company, including a new US export restriction that caused a multibillion-dollar write-off: ‘The president has a plan. He has a vision. And I trust him.’

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday decried the Trump administration’s new restriction on the export of its H20 GPUs to China but said he trusts the president’s “vision” and praised the US leader for boosting domestic manufacturing.

Nvidia’s stock price was up more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.

“The president has a plan. He has a vision. And I trust him,” Huang said in response to an analyst questioning whether Trump’s desire to have the United States win in the AI infrastructure market will allow Nvidia to ship an alternative to the H20 into China.

As a result of the US export restriction implemented against the H20 last month, Nvidia said it “incurred a US$4.5 billion charge in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations as the demand for H20 diminished.” The company added that H20 sales in the first quarter were US$4.5 billion and that it was “unable to ship an additional US$2.5 billion of H20 revenue” for the period.

The export restriction also resulted in a loss of US$8 billion in H20 sales for the second quarter, according to Nvidia.

On the call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress noted that the company sold the H20 “with the approval of the previous administration.” The product was originally designed for Chinese customers by complying with export restrictions set by President Biden’s administration.

“Although our H20 has been in the market for over a year and does not have a market outside of China, the new export controls on H20 did not provide a grace period to allow us to sell through our inventory,” she said.

Expanding on remarks Collette made, Huang said Nvidia has “limited options” with respect to introducing a new AI chip product that complies with U. export rules.

“Obviously, the limits are quite stringent at the moment, and we have nothing to announce today, and when the time comes, we’ll engage the administration and discuss that,” he said.

‘President Trump wants America to win’

At the beginning of his remarks, Huang expanded on his comments from last week where he reportedly called US export controls on AI chips to China a “failure,” calling the country “one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success, with half of the world’s AI researchers based there.”

“The platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally today. However, the US$50 billion China market is effectively closed to us,” he said.

However, Huang also took time to praise Trump for the president’s “bold vision to reshore advanced manufacturing, create jobs and strengthen national security,” noting the investment Nvidia is making with partners to build US manufacturing capacity.

“We’ve made substantial, long-term purchase commitments, a deep investment in America’s AI manufacturing future,” he said.

The CEO lauded Trump too for rescinding the AI diffusion rule implemented by former President Biden that would have introduced new restrictions and requirements for AI chips being exported into many countries across the world.

“President Trump wants America to win, and he also realizes that that we’re not the only country in the race. And he wants [the] United States to win and recognizes that we have to get the American [AI computing] stack out to the world and have the world build on top of American stacks instead of alternatives,” he said.

Blackwell sales growth drives first-quarter revenue

Nvidia made US$44.1 billion in revenue in the first quarter of the company’s 2026 fiscal year, which ended April 27. Exceeding Wall Street’s average estimate by roughly US$800 million, this was up 12 percent sequentially and up 69 percent from the same period last year.

However, the company’s earnings per share for the quarter were 81 cents, missing Wall Street’s expectations by roughly 12 cents. And its gross margin dived 12.5 points sequentially and 17.9 points year over year to 61 percent.

The company said it expects second-quarter revenue to be roughly US$45 billion, which would amount to an approximately 2 percent increase sequentially and a 50 percent year-over-year increase. It expects gross margins to bounce back to 72 percent for the period.

Nvidia’s data center segment delivered nearly 90 percent of its first quarter revenue, thanks to the company growing revenue 10 percent sequentially and 73 percent year over year to $39 million for the category.

Some 87 percent of the company’s data center revenue came from compute products, with Blackwell-based products such as the Grace Blackwell Superchip that goes inside the GB200 NVL72 rack-scale platform helped driving a 5 percent sequentially and a 76 percent year-over-year increase for the sub-category.

The rest of Nvidia’s data center revenue came from networking products, which grew in sales by 64 percent sequentially and 56 percent year over year. The company attributed this sequential increase to the growth of the NVLink compute fabric underpinning its GB200 systems as well as Ethernet for AI solutions.

Nvidia’s gaming revenue grew 48 percent sequentially and 42 percent year over year to US$3.7 billion, which the company called a record, thanks to sales of its Blackwell-based GPUs.

As for its other segments, professional visualization revenue grew 19 percent year over year but was roughly the same as the previous quarter at $509 million. Automotive revenue declined 1 percent sequentially but grew 72 percent year over year to US$576 million. The OEM and other segment declined 12 percent sequentially but grew 42 percent year over year to US$111 million.