More than a dozen U.S. CEOs are flying to Beijing with Donald Trump this week. The group includes Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang isn't on the list. That gap matters, because Nvidia's AI chips sit at the heart of the U.S.-China fight.
Huang has spent 18 months trying to save the China business. Now he's watching from home.
Trump lands in Beijing late Wednesday for two days of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It's the first visit by a sitting U.S. president in nearly 10 years.
The CEOs flying with him want to land deals in the world's second biggest economy. Boeing's Kelly Ortberg is on the plane. The plane maker is close to its first big Chinese order in years.
Qualcomm and Apple have big China ties to protect. Apple has its biggest plant base in China. Tesla wants to keep building cars there.
Nvidia, whose chips power most of the global AI race, didn't get a seat at the table. That's a notable shift.
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Huang has been to China many times in the last 18 months. He's been trying to keep ties warm, with a high-profile trip last summer.
China once made up at least a fifth of Nvidia's data center sales. That share keeps shrinking. Washington keeps tightening what Nvidia can sell into the country.
Nvidia tried hard to keep the China market open. It built special chips just for the country. Those chips had their top features stripped out to meet U.S. rules.
Even those weaker chips have not been cleared for sale. The firm said so in February. The most advanced AI chips have been fully blocked for years.
Hao Hong, the chief investment officer at Lotus Asset Management, told CNBC there's "very little" for Nvidia to gain from this trip. He doesn't see Trump green-lighting Nvidia's top chips for China soon.
His bigger point: tech "decoupling" between the U.S. and China is about to speed up. Chips are at the center of it.
Huang told CNBC's Jim Cramer that if invited, "it would be a privilege, it would be a great honor to represent the United States." He added that he'd let the president "announce whatever he decides to announce."
The president decided to leave him at home.
The trip is being sold as a thaw between the world's two biggest economies. For most of the CEOs on the plane, that's how it plays out.
For Nvidia, the absence is the message. And it's a costly one for a firm whose chips can't yet be sold to one of the biggest markets on Earth.
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