California-based Nvidia has led the charge in the AI chips race, as a leading manufacturer of the technology powering data centers. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tech giant Nvidia is the world’s leading artificial-intelligence chipmaker, but the company’s success has also put it in the crossfire of trade tensions.

The Santa Clara, California-based company, which is approaching a market capitalization of $5 trillion, has seen rapid growth due to its chips, which are predominantly used to power massive data centers used by other tech firms, like OpenAI, the creator of popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.

But Nvidia’s leading technology has been used as a negotiating tool in President Donald Trump’s trade spat with China, which was kickstarted by Trump’s sweeping tariffs in April and

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