Nvidia’s Chinese Standoff Deepens as Wall Street Lifts Targets Ahead of Earnings

Despite US licenses for Chinese firms to buy H200 chips, no shipments have arrived. Nvidia faces structural risk as rivals develop local chips, while Wall Street remains bullish on AI infrastructure growth.

For all the bullish signals swirling around Nvidia this earnings season — record market cap, soaring AI-infrastructure forecasts, and a flurry of upgraded price targets — the most intractable issue remains the one that refuses to move: not a single H200 chip has crossed into China, despite Washington granting licenses for ten major buyers to purchase up to 75,000 units each.

The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security has authorized Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com and roughly half a dozen other Chinese companies to acquire the chips, exclusively for civilian use. Deliveries, however, have yet to materialize. Chinese firms are holding back amid mounting pressure from Beijing to block or at least rigorously vet the orders. The standoff was compounded by CEO Jensen Huang’s trip to Peking as part of a US delegation — a visit that investors had hoped would unlock a breakthrough but instead ended with no visible progress. Nvidia shares slipped about 4% on Friday to $225.32 in New York.

The stakes for Nvidia are hard to overstate. Before the US tightened export controls, the company commanded roughly 95% of China’s market for advanced AI chips. The country once accounted for 13% of Nvidia’s total revenue, and Huang has pegged the Chinese AI market at $50 billion for this year alone. The longer Nvidia remains sidelined, the deeper Chinese rivals like Tencent and Alibaba are digging into their own chip-development efforts, creating a structural risk that outlasts any single licensing round.

None of that has dampened Wall Street’s enthusiasm for Nvidia’s core story. Bank of America this week lifted its price target to $320 from $300, arguing that the addressable market for AI data-center infrastructure is expanding faster than previously estimated. The bank now expects that market to reach roughly $1.7 trillion by 2030 — a figure that would keep Nvidia’s accelerators at the center of the AI buildout. Other analysts are also firmly in the bull camp: Bernstein and Citi hold at $300, UBS sees $245, and Wells Fargo projects $315 by 2027.

The stock closed Friday in Frankfurt at €193.90, up 14.41% over the past month and 20.36% year-to-date. The current level sits about 3.6% below its 52-week high of €201.05 and well above its key moving averages.

All eyes now turn to Wednesday, May 20, when Nvidia reports fiscal first-quarter results. Management has guided for revenue of $78 billion and a gross margin above 74%. The consensus among analysts points to adjusted earnings per share of $1.78 on sales around $79 billion. Bank of America acknowledges some margin pressure from higher memory costs but views it as manageable.

Investors will be listening for three themes above all: the trajectory of Blackwell demand, margin resilience, and any clarity on H200 shipments to China. On the product roadmap, Nvidia has Blackwell already in volume production and the Vera Rubin platform slated for the second half of 2026. An appearance at Computex in early June could also bring news of a next-generation CPU, expanding the company’s addressable market beyond GPUs.

Separately, Nvidia is strengthening its boardroom oversight. Suzanne Nora Johnson, a former vice chair at Goldman Sachs with expertise in research, healthcare and audit committees, is expected to join on July 13, 2026, expanding the board to 11 members.

The earnings report will also benefit from the spending plans of Nvidia’s biggest clients. Meta has lifted its capital-expenditure ceiling to $145 billion, while Microsoft is budgeting $190 billion for the current calendar year — both far above prior expectations. Those numbers reinforce the demand thesis, even as the China question casts a long shadow. Whether the H200 export licenses actually translate into shipments before or after the earnings release could well determine how the market reacts to the numbers.