(Yicai) Jan. 22 -- Jensen Huang, the chief executive officer of Nvidia, met with the US chip giant’s research and development team in Shanghai and attended Chinese New Year celebrations with the team yesterday as part of the final stop of his week-long trip to China.

Huang, who is also president and co-founder of Nvidia, said that the main reason for his visit to China was to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year with his employees. He arrived in Beijing on Jan. 19 and has also visited Shenzhen, Taichung and Taipei. However, no details of his itinerary were made public apart from an appreciation award ceremony in Beijing.

It might be no coincidence that just before his trip to China, the US government announced a new round of restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence chips.

Huang's visit to China serves two purposes, an analyst who attended the Nvidia appreciation award ceremony in Beijing told Yicai. First, he wishes to convey a friendly gesture and highlight the firm's commitment to the Chinese market and secondly, he has come to personally listen to and understand perspectives from the Chinese market.

During his visit, Huang will gather feedback from employees, developers and customers in China which may provide important insights for Nvidia's future strategies in the country, analysts said.

Nvidia's R&D in China not only supports the Chinese market but also the global market. As a result, the Santa Clara-based firm has been strengthening its AI R&D capabilities in the country in recent years. Nvidia has nearly 4,000 workers in China, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Nvidia has a very low employee turnover rate compared to other tech companies, Huang said. "The firm's global employee turnover rate is around 2 percent, and the figure is even lower in China, at just 0.9 percent. This is something I am very proud of.

"In the tech industry, employee turnover rates are generally around 10 percent, and sometimes they can even approach 20 percent," he added.

Nvidia’s sales in China are on the rise. The firm's China revenue jumped 12 percent in the first three quarters of the fiscal year 2025 from a year earlier to USD11.5 billion, according to Dow Jones' data.

Editor: Kim Taylor