Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged nuance when it comes to regulating China’s access to U.S. technologies that are critical to developing artificial intelligence.
In an interview with Citadel Securities on Tuesday, he warned that what harms China can often harm the U.S., and sometimes even in worse ways.
“Before we leap towards policies that are hurtful to other people, take a step back and maybe reflect on what are the policies that are helpful to America,” Huang said.
His words of caution come as Nvidia processors have become hot commodities in the AI race as well as political bargaining chips in the U.S.-China trade war.
Huang said he’d like the world to run on U.S. know-how, but noted about half the world’s AI researchers are in China.
“I think it’s a mistake to not have those researchers build AI on American technology,” he added.
Trying to strike a balance between his goal of maintaining U.S. tech supremacy along with access to China will require nuance rather than an all-or-nothing approach, Huang said. But that’s not the case now, as Nvidia is “100% out of China.”
“We went from 95% market share to 0%, and so I can’t imagine any policymaker thinking that that’s a good idea, that whatever policy we implemented caused America to lose one of the largest markets in the world,” he said.
He didn’t name names, or administrations. But the Biden administration imposed rules in 2022 to restrict the export of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, leading the company to design a processor that met the new limits.
In April, Nvidia said the Trump administration blocked the sale of some of its AI chips to China without licenses and would require them for future sales. Then in August, the administration granted export licenses for certain Nvidia and AMD chips to China in exchange for 15% of the revenues.
But Chinese regulators have reportedly told domestic tech companies not to buy Nvidia chips that were designed to meet U.S. export requirements.
Meanwhile, Beijing placed strict limits on exports of rare earths, a critical input for a wide range of advanced technologies, mimicking U.S. export rules on AI chips.
That prompted President Donald Trump to fire back with an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods. Officials from both sides are due to resume talks this week, ahead of a planned meeting with Trump and his Chinese counterpart later this month.
For now, Huang told Citadel that all of Nvidia’s financial forecasts assume China will remain out of the picture.
“If anything happens in China, which I hope it will, it’ll be a bonus,” he said. “But it’s a large market. China is the second largest computer market in the world. It is a vibrant ecosystem. I think it’s a mistake for the United States to not participate. So hopefully we’ll continue to explain and inform and hold out hope for a change in policy.”
