Nvidia's Air Force One Diplomacy: How a China Export Deal and a $150 Billion Buyback Plan Propelled the AI Titan Past $5.7 Trillion

US clears H200 AI chips for export to Alibaba, Tencent, and others, boosting Nvidia’s market cap past silver’s global investment class. Earnings due May 20.

When Jensen Huang boarded Air Force One in Washington, few expected the Nvidia chief to end up in a commercial delegation to Beijing that would reshape the company's market value overnight. Yet that is exactly what happened. The US Commerce Department’s decision to clear H200 artificial-intelligence chips for export to roughly ten Chinese technology giants — including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com — sent Nvidia’s stock to an all-time high of $236.46 and pushed its market capitalization past $5.7 trillion. That figure now exceeds the entire global investment asset class of silver.

The approval, however, is only half the story. Chinese regulators are still vetting the transactions under their own supply-chain security standards, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made clear on May 15 that the final import decision rests with Beijing. Each approved customer can order up to 75,000 units of the second-most-powerful Nvidia AI processor, with distribution handled by partners such as Lenovo and Foxconn. The political theatre of air travel — with Huang joining the CEOs of Apple, Tesla and Boeing on Trump’s official delegation — underscored how central Nvidia has become to US-China tech diplomacy.

Wall Street responded with a flurry of price-target upgrades that reflect both the China reopening and the broader AI infrastructure boom. Cantor Fitzgerald led the pack at $350, arguing that Nvidia’s production capacity for 2026 and 2027 is effectively sold out, driven by surging demand from agentic AI. Wells Fargo lifted its target to $315 from $265 and forecasts global AI compute capacity will balloon from 9.2 gigawatts to 25.2 GW by 2029. UBS raised its price objective to $275, projecting first-quarter revenues of $81 billion — $3 billion above the official guidance. Bank of America now eyes $320, citing a total addressable market for AI accelerators that has swelled to an estimated $1.2 trillion.

The next catalyst comes on May 20, when Nvidia reports results for the first quarter of fiscal 2027. The consensus calls for revenue of roughly $78.8 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $1.77. Goldman Sachs believes the company could beat that consensus by about $2 billion, thanks to the ramp-up of the Blackwell chip generation — a product line that is already fuelling expectations of an even larger second-half revenue surge. In Frankfurt, the stock hit a record €201.05 on Thursday before pulling back to around €197 on Friday, extending a twelve-month gain of more than 63%.

Beyond the quarterly numbers, Nvidia is preparing a product-cycle refresh that investors have barely priced in. The next-generation “Vera Rubin” architecture is slated for launch this quarter, with mass production of server racks expected to begin in September or October. Adding further fuel to the stock’s recent run, reports have emerged of a potential $150 billion share buyback programme over the next twelve months — a topic already generating buzz among institutional holders.

For all the bullish momentum, the China chapter remains unfinished. The US approval is conditional on final sign-off from Beijing, and any delay or rejection could reintroduce the geopolitical risk that Nvidia shares have largely shrugged off. But with the company’s data-centre pipeline effectively sold out for the next two years, and a buyback of unprecedented scale on the table, analysts see limited downside. As one strategist put it: “Nvidia’s hardest problem now is not demand — it’s keeping up with it.”