You know that scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker burns the mountain of cash and says "it's not about the money, it's about sending a message"?
Yeah. Except in Nvidia's case, the mountain of cash doesn't even exist anymore. Gone. Evaporated somewhere between Washington and Beijing. And the message coming through is crystal clear: nobody runs this show alone.
The Chip Nobody's Buying
Nvidia's CFO, Colette Kress, dropped a line during Wednesday's earnings call that should make every shareholder choke on their coffee:
"Although small quantities of the H200 semiconductor for China-based customers have been approved by the U.S. government, we have not yet generated any revenue."
Read that right? No. Revenue. Zero. Zilch.
Trump greenlit the sale of the more advanced H200 chip to China back in December — on the condition that the U.S. would pocket 25% of the sales value (an "imperial toll booth," if you will). But between bureaucratic approval and an actual sale, there's a chasm called security scrutiny from both sides.
China doesn't trust. The U.S. doesn't trust. And Nvidia's stuck in the middle, like that sweating guy meme staring at two buttons.
China used to account for at least one-fifth of Nvidia's data center revenue. One-fifth. Of a company pulling in tens of billions per quarter in that segment. You don't patch that hole with sell-side analyst optimism.
The Chinese Didn't Just Sit Around
While Nvidia was lobbying in Washington and Jensen Huang was snapping smiley photos in Beijing, the Chinese market did what markets do: it adapted.
A flood of Chinese AI chip and language model companies went public in Hong Kong and mainland China over the past few months. Names like MiniMax and Moore Threads watched their stocks rocket right after their IPOs.
And this isn't just hype. Sam Altman himself — yes, the OpenAI guy — called the progress of Chinese tech companies "remarkable." He said that in some areas they're already close to the technological frontier.
Kress, from Nvidia, was more blunt in her warning:
"Our competitors in China, bolstered by recent IPOs, are making progress and have the potential to disrupt the structure of the global AI industry in the long run."
Translated from corporate-speak: we're scared.
The Price Factor — Where It Really Hits the Fan
Here's the detail that mainstream markets love to ignore: Chinese AI companies are significantly cheaper. Their products cost a fraction of what American equivalents charge.
Rory Green, chief China economist at TS Lombard, dropped the bomb: "You can easily imagine a world where the majority of the global population runs on a Chinese tech stack in five to ten years."
Five to ten years.
Read that again.
This isn't about who has the most powerful chip today. It's about who scales faster, cheaper, and serves the world that can't afford $40K for an enterprise GPU. India, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America — these people aren't going to wait for Nvidia and Uncle Sam to sort out their geopolitical beef.
Nassim Taleb would say Nvidia is a textbook case of fragility: the entire thesis depends on a geopolitical arrangement no CEO controls. When your revenue depends on two governments that can't stand each other agreeing on something, you don't have a competitive advantage — you have an existential vulnerability.
The Question Nobody Wants to Ask
The market prices Nvidia as if it were the only church in town. But what if the whole town decides to build its own temples?
The stratospheric multiples on this stock assume continuous global dominance. They assume China will always need to buy. They assume nobody else can compete.
Every single one of those assumptions is being tested — right now, live, in real time.
So tell me: you've got Nvidia in your portfolio, what's your Plan B? Because Nvidia clearly doesn't have one yet.
