Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has joined US President Donald Trump on his trip to China this week – boarding Air Force One during a stop en route to Beijing – with Trump dismissing earlier reports that the tech leader had been snubbed as “incorrect”.

The White House confirmed that Huang had boarded Air Force One during a refuelling stop in Anchorage, Alaska. It added that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was also travelling on the presidential plane.

“Jensen is attending the summit at the invitation of President Trump to support America and the administration’s goals,” an Nvidia representative told the South China Morning Post in an email.

Seventeen American CEOs were on a list of invited business delegates released by the White House on Monday – a smaller group than Trump’s previous China trip in 2017, when 27 high-profile executives joined.

Huang was not included on Monday’s list, which fuelled speculation Washington had limited appetite for rolling back some of its tech export controls. In an interview last week, he said he would have joined the trip “if invited”.

Huang’s last-minute addition to the US delegation comes as Nvidia struggles to export its chips to China. Washington has allowed the firm to sell its H200 graphics processing unit in China as long as a 25 per cent revenue surcharge flows to the US Treasury, but the firm’s more advanced models remain restricted.

China, meanwhile, is doubling down on efforts to boost self-sufficiency in its tech sector. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently told the Senate that China had still not made any H200 purchases.