Even if the market cedes to Huawei, Simon Huang will still join Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board to maintain ties with China

According to Dongcha Beating monitoring, amid the storm of Sino-U.S. tech decoupling and export controls, Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang has agreed to join the Advisory Board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.

The Advisory Board is currently chaired by Apple CEO Tim Cook. Huang's low-key move this time highlights that, despite Nvidia's high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chips being completely banned from being sold to China, he is still actively trying to maintain the underlying ties with China's political and business circles through civil and academic channels.

Established in 2000 by former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, the Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board is one of the very few elite forums that can bring together top business and academic leaders from China and the United States. The 65-member list includes global giants such as Tesla's Elon Musk, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, as well as financial industry leaders from JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock. The Advisory Board holds an annual meeting in Beijing, providing a direct communication channel for multinational business leaders and top Chinese decision-makers. Chinese senior officials have also met with Advisory Board representatives on multiple occasions.

Huang's decision to join the Board comes against the backdrop of Nvidia's unprecedented dilemma in the Chinese market. Due to the U.S. government's escalating chip ban, Nvidia's custom-designed low-performance H20 chip for China was completely banned from sale last April, while the more advanced H200 chip faced policy restrictions in China aimed at protecting the local industry.

Last week, Huang publicly admitted that Nvidia has essentially ceded the Chinese market to local competitors such as Huawei and advised investors not to expect approval for recent market entry applications. However, Huang also emphasized that Nvidia has been deeply rooted in the Chinese market for 30 years, with a large customer base and partners, and is eager to resume serving the Chinese market at any time.