Author: Gu Lingyu, Tencent Technology
Editor: Su Yang, Tencent Technology
“As long as you join NVIDIA, you will grow old with me, and I feel very proud.” At the annual meeting in January 2025, Jensen Huang told the employees in China.
In the past few years, NVIDIA employees in China have experienced increasingly tightened chip export restrictions while witnessing an increase in colleagues and an expansion of office space. Now, the balance that had been maintained between these two changes has been shattered by Jensen Huang's resignation. Some people are beginning to reconsider their career futures.
A person close to NVIDIA China revealed that for almost the past week, he and his colleagues have been in a state of high concern. Although no adjustment news has been received yet, they are uneasy because this change could affect the already restricted business in China.
He believes that even without considering complex factors such as geopolitics, the organizational structure in which about 60 executives reported directly to Jensen Huang will be difficult to maintain after the new CEO takes office, and restructuring will be almost inevitable. It remains unknown whether the team will continue to receive the same support. In his view, the rapid growth of NVIDIA's workforce in China over the past two years is directly related to Jensen Huang's push.
Jensen Huang enjoys a very high reputation within the company, and after the resignation news was announced, employees are still trying to keep him.
On November 13, Phoenix Technology reported that in a spontaneous vote initiated by employees on NVIDIA's intranet, over 97% of participants hoped Jensen Huang would remain. A report by Wired stated that a post asking the board to consider employee opinions received over 1,600 comments, most of which supported Jensen Huang's return.
Jensen Huang's internal reputation comes from personal ability, long-term business performance, and NVIDIA's generous treatment of employees.
A headhunter stated that NVIDIA's compensation packages in China are very generous, and they rarely prioritize NVIDIA employees as target candidates in their daily recruitment, “Their lives are too good, it's hard to poach them.”
NVIDIA's fiscal year 2026 annual report disclosed that to fulfill the tax withholding obligations for equity awards, the company withheld approximately 51 million shares through net settlement, totaling about $7.9 billion.
For some Chinese employees, beyond retention, there is also more specific career anxiety.
An employee from NVIDIA China interviewed by Phoenix Technology expressed concern about the business being affected, stating, “I am already preparing to start looking for a job.” Another employee mentioned that the chat group for employees in China is relatively silent, while the overseas group is discussing whether Jensen Huang can return.
Currently, NVIDIA has not made any official announcements about downsizing its Chinese team. The official NVIDIA recruitment platform still has job postings located in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, covering areas such as AI developer technology, GPU architecture, circuit verification, and autonomous driving testing, including positions for the 2027 campus recruitment.
In the past few years, even though NVIDIA China has always been under compliance pressure, the workforce has continued to expand.
Publicly available information shows that NVIDIA has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. In recent years, Jensen Huang's participation in employee annual meetings in China has become a fixed program.
In January 2025, Jensen Huang stated at the annual meeting in Beijing that the company has nearly 4,000 employees in China, mainly engaged in R&D and also participating in local partner collaborations. He also mentioned that the employee turnover rate in China is about 0.9%, lower than the global level of about 2%.
“There are almost no seats left.” said the aforementioned NVIDIA China person.
The increase in the number of employees is also driving changes in office locations. In May 2025, NVIDIA established a new office in Shanghai, located at No. 600 Naxian Road, Zhangjiang, Shanghai. In January 2026, Jensen Huang visited the new office in Shanghai to communicate with employees.
According to NVIDIA's financial report, as of the quarter ending April 26, 2026, NVIDIA did not ship Hopper architecture data center products to China, while sales in the same period of 2025 amounted to $4.6 billion.
The quarterly report as of July 26, 2026, shows that the shipment of Hopper products to China has somewhat recovered, but the revenue contributed remains less than 1% of the company's global data center revenue. NVIDIA also stressed that in the performance guidance for the next quarter, it will continue to exclude any data center computing revenue from China.
The restricted sales of advanced AI chips do not mean NVIDIA's business in China has come to a standstill; the Chinese team is involved in businesses related to gaming graphics cards, partial AI product delivery and after-sales, as well as autonomous driving.
Based on the location of direct customer headquarters, in fiscal year 2026, customers from mainland China and Hong Kong still contributed approximately $19.68 billion in revenue for NVIDIA, accounting for about 9.1% of global revenue.
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