wow! things moved fast. It was only yesterday we were debating what could/should happen.

If he did what he did as an employee, he would be fired too. As a CEO it was much worse.

Also, this did not happen in a day, it was cooking for some time and the mid-term shift of power may have something to do with it as well.

All the folks arguing "oh China does not need the chips, this ban is bad". That is a separate issue. Fact is there is a ban and this reeks of at least turning a blind eye in pursuit of profit, if not downright complicity. Second major character flaw for a leader after he demonstrated tendency to cheat.

A CEO is the public face of the company. If he was in China, he would already be in a remote prison for "re-education".

Folks may have their own opinion, but I do think China desperately wants access to the latest nVidia chips. Their own efforts are lagging behind (maybe at 80% and the last 20% is the hardest). So in the meantime, they don't want their software part to fall behind. So they need the latest/greatest for their AI models.

Eventually they may get to hardware parity and likely even get ahead (they have enough smart people and consistent leadership focus). But not today.

For them this was a win-win. If it worked, they would have the chips they need and if it blew up, they would have slowed down the leading US company (and it will affect nVidia).

Mr. Huang who already was quite successful eventually could not manage the stratospheric growth that he lucked into on the back of AI. Maybe on a product level he did, but on a policy level, he seems to have come up short.

Now that leaves another big hardware company, also helmed by a Taiwanese - I hope they can keep their heads (women are generally better at that since they only have to manage one head).