Nvidia's $5.7 Trillion China Coup: From Air Force One Diplomacy to a $150 Billion Buyback

Nvidia surpasses silver's market size after US approves H200 chip exports to Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, with a 25% revenue share for Washington.

Jensen Huang boarded Air Force One alongside Donald Trump and the CEOs of Apple, Tesla, and Boeing — and within days, Nvidia's market capitalization had surpassed the entire global market for physical silver. The catalyst: a U.S. government green light to ship H200 Blackwell-generation chips to roughly a dozen Chinese technology giants, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com.

The approval, issued by the Commerce Department just ahead of Nvidia's first-quarter earnings on May 20, opens the door to a potential $50 billion market. But the revenue sharing terms have shifted notably: Washington now takes 25% of the China sales from these chips, up from the 15% agreed last summer. Critics warn the arrangement may still allow Chinese AI firms to build competitive models despite the restrictions.

At the Frankfurt exchange, Nvidia shares slipped 1.52% to around €197 on Friday, pulling back from Thursday's record high of $236.46 in New York. The dip comes after a month-long rally of 18.55% and a year-to-date surge of more than 63%. The stock's long-term moving averages remain stretched, signaling the company is emerging from a period of sky-high expectations rather than weakness.

The China clearance is only half the story. Chinese authorities are now reviewing their own supply-chain security standards before the H200 chips physically enter the country, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer noted on May 15. The final import decision rests with Beijing. Still, the market is pricing in the upside: Nvidia's market capitalization hit roughly $5.7 trillion, overtaking silver as an asset class by market size.

A separate ethical disclosure filed May 14 revealed that Trump holds Nvidia stock valued between $1 million and $5 million, with more than 3,600 individual trades since the start of the year. The White House referred questions to the Trump Organization, which stated the investments are held in fully discretionary accounts at independent financial institutions.

Analysts have rushed to raise price targets in response to the China deal and the ongoing hyperscaler capex boom. TD Cowen lifted its target to $275 from $235, citing strong fundamentals and rising investment from cloud giants. UBS matched that figure at $275, forecasting first-quarter revenue of $81 billion — $3 billion above Nvidia's official guidance of $78 billion. Wells Fargo went further to $315 from $265, projecting AI compute capacity will swell from 9.2 GW to 25.2 GW by 2029. Cantor Fitzgerald set a $350 target, arguing Nvidia's production for 2026 and 2027 is effectively sold out due to the boom in agentic AI. Bank of America raised to $320 from $300, putting the addressable market for AI accelerators at $1.2 trillion.

For the upcoming quarterly report on May 20, the consensus calls for $78.8 billion in revenue and adjusted earnings per share of $1.77. Goldman Sachs sees a potential beat of roughly $2 billion relative to the consensus. Nvidia's order pipeline for its Blackwell and future Rubin architectures now exceeds $1 trillion, according to TD Cowen, which expects another positive revenue surprise in the low-single-billion range.

On the product front, the new "Vera Rubin" architecture is slated to launch this quarter, with mass production of server racks expected to begin in September or October. Meanwhile, reports have surfaced of a possible $150 billion share buyback program over the next twelve months — a agenda item that has further buoyed investor sentiment.

Three factors will converge on earnings day: the trajectory of China chip deliveries, demand for the Blackwell lineup, and the political debate around Trump's Nvidia stake. Friday's pullback does little to alter the broader trend, but it raises the stakes ahead of the report.