Nvidia‘s (NASDAQ: NVDA) business has been going strong over the past few years thanks to its dominance in the global artificial intelligence (AI) chip market. The company designs the most powerful AI chips on the market, and customers of every size have rushed to gain access to these tools to fuel their AI programs. This has helped revenue soar in the double and triple digits, and sales have come in at a high level of profitability too. As a result, Nvidia’s stock has soared 980% over the past three years.
But in recent times, one particular thing has emerged as this market leader’s biggest problem — a problem that cost it billions of dollars in the latest quarter. And that’s a halt to its exports to China due to U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips. Nvidia took a charge in the quarter on chips it no longer was able to sell into that market and faced the possibility of completely losing out on this market that represented 13% of its total sales last year.
This week, though, the company announced fantastic news: The U.S. ensured Nvidia that it would receive a license to once again sell its H20 chip in China, and Nvidia also said it would launch a new chip that meets U.S. guidelines.