NVIDIA's Jensen Huang has criticized the US's AI policies and their method of putting China in the backseat, claiming that the "diffusion" rule is nonsensical.
NVIDIA's Jensen Claims That There's No Stopping China, Banning US Chips Means That China Will Create Their Own Ecosystem
Team Green has played a major role in China's technological achievements in the past, and the company has a deep-rooted "30-year" relationship with the country, which is why, when the initial round of US export controls came in, Jensen resisted against them from the very start. Now, in an interview with Stratechery at Computex, NVIDIA's CEO claims that the AI diffusion rule would limit American technology, and is "expressed exactly wrong", saying that if NVIDIA's chips aren't adopted rapidly, they might become irrelevant in regions like China.
The idea of AI diffusion limiting other countries access American technology is a mission expressed exactly wrong, it should be about accelerating the adoption of American technology everywhere before it’s too late. If the goal is for America to lead, then AI diffusion did exactly the opposite of that.
- NVIDIA's CEO
He disclosed that more than 50% of AI researchers are from China, and that companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and many others have Chinese employees working on top-end projects. Jensen says there's no stopping China, and even after the harsh US regulations imposed on the country, they came up with achievements such as DeepSeek and Ascend AI chips, which show that China is well on-par with America in the AI race. American technology should enter China, where not only would it make the region reliant on it, but it would help offset the trade deficit and create more jobs, according to NVIDIA's CEO.
Allowing China to build its own AI ecosystem will make the US lose its AI leadership, and in particular, make NVIDIA a second option for Chinese customers. NVIDIA's CEO says that the AI Diffusion rule will actually catalyze China's AI developments, saying that "their leadership and their technology will diffuse all around the world." So it is safe to say that US regulations on China are only going to hurt them in the long run, and this has indeed been the case, given that China's AI achievements are only continuing to grow.
Talking about the H20 AI GPU ban, NVIDIA's CEO said that they are going to lose up to $15 billion worth of sales, with the US losing $3 billion in taxes. He revealed that China's AI business is worth up to $50 billion, equivalent to Boeing, where it is not just the plane you are leaving behind, but the whole ecosystem. Here's how he summarized NVIDIA's reaction to the H20 GPU ban:
Exactly. Anybody who thought that one chess move to somehow ban China from H20s would somehow cut off their ability to do AI is deeply uninformed.
The US has taken a negative stance against Chinese AI developments, which started from the Biden administration, and now continues with the current one. However, in that timeline, China isn't seen holding back at all, since the nation has continued developing AI at its original pace, and by the looks of it, they won't stop at all.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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