Can Nvidia's Jensen Huang Beat This Latest Challenge? Here's What History Says.

The government hasn’t granted Nvidia or fellow chip designers a license, so for the moment, they can’t export to China. And unless the government offers companies licenses, and quickly, it’s likely this will impact earnings in coming quarters too. So, it’s logical to expect lower revenue from Nvidia and its peers, at least in the near term.

Now, let’s consider whether Nvidia’s Huang can overcome this latest challenge. Here, we can look to his moves in the past when challenges have come up. For example, when the pandemic disrupted the global supply chain a few years ago, Huang paid more than $1 billion to secure its chip supply. Nvidia doesn’t manufacture its chips, and instead relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Another example: When the Biden administration announced the initial chip restrictions to China, Huang set Nvidia to work designing a new chip to match export guidelines — that became the H20.

These issues, spanning 2021 and 2022, supported earnings growth and eventually led to share price performance.

And Huang hasn’t been afraid of seizing opportunities too, for instance turning the GPU, which originally served the gaming market, into a key element for general-purpose computing. Nvidia launched parallel computing platform CUDA to make this happen back in 2006. This broadening of Nvidia’s reach also led to a time of share price gains.

So, history shows us Huang always has been proactive, which has resulted in positive outcomes for Nvidia.

Now, let’s return to our question: Will Huang beat this latest challenge?

History shows us the Nvidia CEO has a strong track record of making the right decisions at the right times. That’s positive. And right now, Huang is continuing this — he arrived in Beijing this week to meet with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, according to Reuters.

Of course, no matter how active Huang is in this situation, the U.S. government ultimately is the decision maker. And if sales to China are completely eliminated, this will weigh on Nvidia’s earnings — sales to that country made up 14% of the company’s data center revenue in the 2024 fiscal year.

Still, Nvidia has shown its resilience facing past challenges, and the company remains the leader in the high-growth AI market. So, even in the worst-case scenario, there’s reason to believe the resourceful Huang will find a way to limit the impact — and all this makes Nvidia a strong long-term buy for tech investors, even amid the current turmoil.

Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $524,747!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $622,041!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 153% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 14, 2025

Adria Cimino has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Can Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Beat This Latest Challenge? Here’s What History Says. was originally published by The Motley Fool