Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Warns China Could Win AI Race Amid Trade War Tensions

Nvidia wants China's market share to secure the future of CUDA in the region -- America's trade war threatens Huang's influence, and could bolster competition

Even as the head of the world's first five trillion dollar company, this week hasn't been great for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Despite all his efforts, President Trump did not discuss the sale of advanced Nvidia GPUs with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping this week, nor did he give the official go-ahead for Nvidia to develop and sell a cut-down version of its flagship Blackwell GPUs. The ongoing trade war between the two world's largest economies has Nvidia stuck in the middle, with the U.S. looking to maintain its technological lead, while Nvidia seeks to maintain its strong software and hardware position in Southeast Asia to fight off a growing domestic chip industry in China. For most of this year, the goals of the U.S. government and Nvidia have been mostly aligned, leading to enormous deals for the GPU manufacturer, including government contracts and stakes in government-owned businesses. But as China and America have become more entrenched in their trading positions, both have begun to move towards domestically controlled supply chains of the latest chip designs, leaving Nvidia facing a waning Chinese market share. Nvidia has been selling GPUs to China for a long time, but while it was previously mostly related to gaming and cryptocurrency mining, the growth of the AI industry has made these sales more crucial and the fallout more dramatic. Export controls put in place in 2022 curtailed its sales of its latest GPUs to China, but Nvidia has made bespoke models like the H20 and 5090D that offer reduced performance compared to the flagship models it sells in Western markets. That continued in 2025 with the introduction of the AI Diffusion rule, which was designed to restrict Nvidia's sale of its top chips to China and other blacklisted countries around the world. This was ultimately pulled by the Trump administration mere days before it was set to become enforceable, but since then, it has swung back and forth, allowing sales, then disallowing them. Right now, Blackwell GPUs remain off the table for China, at least for now. Even with Nvidia praising the administration for its stance on AI and global sales, the U.S. has maintained an antagonistic stance towards China on trade with various tariffs and policies, often brandishing access to Nvidia GPUs as a bargaining chip in negotiations. China's response has been strong, cutting international companies' access to its domestic manufacturing facilities, and pushing for its own firms and government offices to utilize as many domestically produced chips as possible. Huawei has developed a rack-scale CloudMatrix 384, which is being pushed by the Chinese government, though it is not as efficient as Nvidia's latest offerings. Both China and the U.S. are driving toward chipmaking self-sufficiency, or at least more self-controlled supply chains. For Nvidia, this has led to a waning of the company's influence in China. Access to its hardware is simply unreliable, so countries and companies are looking for alternatives, and the Chinese government is pushing companies toward homegrown chips. CUDA has Nvidia's proverbial moat, shielding it from attack, and welcoming users into its castle gates. The software stack has become so ubiquitous in various industries that Nvidia GPUs are all but required for everyday use. Although competitors do exist, and AMD's hardware is by many measures, almost as capable as Nvidia's. But, without CUDA support, it's a major headache for companies to move to a new standard. That's the business approach that Nvidia has taken globally, too. As hyperscalers deploy huge AI data centers to AI workloads, it wants their GPUs at the heart, supported by other crucial technologies like NVLink Fusion and ConnectX, just to name a few. This is to ensure Nvidia's long-term dominance in the data center segment. With around half of the world's leading AI developers living and working in China, Nvidia wants those users working with its GPUs, harnessing the CUDA platform. But if those developers can't get Nvidia GPUs, they can't use CUDA, meaning that they'll use something else. We saw the first examples of how quickly this can happen at the end of September, when the latest DeepSeek model included support for China-native chips and the CANN platform, developed by Huawei. CANN is also open source, which will aid in its adoption in China and elsewhere, and industry alliances of Chinese AI firms may help to consolidate their efforts in pushing away from Nvidia's near-monopoly. Though DeepSeek still supports CUDA, its developers are encouraging users to leverage the TileLang kernel for prototyping instead. Although these models and the associated domestic hardware may not be as capable as Nvidia's platforms yet, China has a number of levers it can pull to make them more competitive. Long-term investments from China make it clear that it wants to control its own destiny when it comes to the latest hardware. Its domestic chip suppliers are ramping up, and the investment is there to help that continue. But it will take time, and until that inflection point happens, Nvidia wants to have enough of a foot in the door that its relevance will never evaporate completely. Unfortunately for Nvidia, the U.S. government is loosening the company's control. China purchased most of the million-plus Nvidia HGX H20 GPUs that were produced last year, and GPUs were also smuggled into the country. DeepSeek R2 was trained using Nvidia chips, despite a push by the authorities to use domestic chips instead. China's chips cannot compete when it comes to training workloads quite yet. If Nvidia has one saving grace, it is that the chip industry is enormous, expensive, and takes time to change. China may want its own domestic chip supply, and it may have a decent AI development framework, and its hardware may even be pretty good for inference, even if it's not quite as efficient. But there's no denying that Nvidia and other Western companies are years ahead of even China's best, likely due to the lack of advanced EUV lithography machines, which are required to develop the latest cutting-edge nodes. There are plenty of reasons that China views Taiwan through such hungry eyes, and access to tools which can produce the most cutting-edge process technologies is undoubtedly one of them. Even if China can convert a huge portion of its AI industry to using domestic chips and push for the development of its own domestic supply chains, those are going to take years to build up, and without ASML's advanced tools, they may be on the back foot. But, how long that will hold up for remains to be seen.

Will China win the AI race?

Queen Mary University of London and King's College London provide funding as members of The Conversation UK. "China is going to win the AI race," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has told an AI summit in London. The Taiwanese-born boss of the chipmaker, the world's most valuable public company, believes the Chinese are already just "nanoseconds" behind the Americans and well placed to overtake them. He pointed to China's energy superiority and AI research talent, as well as the risk that the Trump administration's ban on selling China the most advanced chips will just galvanise Beijing to close that technological gap. Huang did soften his stance later to say American could still win the race, but he has raised potentially existential questions about the road ahead. We asked two experts whether China is likely to prevail. Yes Greg Slabaugh, Professor of Computer Vision and AI, Queen Mary University of London Artificial intelligence has always been an international enterprise: papers, open-source models and datasets often move freely, and breakthroughs emerge from collaborations across borders. Yet in several domains, China's research dominance is already clear. Take computer vision, the field that enables machines to interpret and reason about visual data. It underpins everything from autonomous vehicles and robotics to medical imaging and surveillance. Held in October in Hawaii, the 2025 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is one of the world's most prestigious and competitive computer vision venues. Of the research papers presented, half of all authors were affiliated with Chinese institutions, far ahead of the second-placed US, which had 17% of papers. If Chinese nationals working abroad were included, the gap would be even wider. Based on this admittedly simplistic metric, China has already won. It led the world in the volume and visibility of cutting-edge computer vision research at the conference, shaping the agenda in one of AI's most dynamic areas. This strength stems from long-term strategic planning. In 2017, Beijing launched its new generation artificial intelligence development plan, a national strategy to make China the world leader in AI by 2030. That ambition has been backed by enormous state-guided investment. China's recently launched National Venture Capital Guidance Fund, worth around US$138 billion (£105 billion), now channels capital into strategic "hard tech" sectors such as AI, semiconductors and quantum computing. Provincial governments and state-owned enterprises operate numerous additional funds that co-invest with private firms. Together, they create a coordinated financial ecosystem that can scale technologies from lab to market at speed. The United States still leads in key areas: private-sector investment (by about 12 times), foundational models and advanced semiconductor design, led by companies like Nvidia. But China is moving quickly to close the gap. Its approach, guided more by state-led industrial policy than purely by market competition, aligns research, infrastructure and industry in a way that the more fragmented western system can struggle to match. Cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen now host vast AI computing hubs, also known as "AI factories", which supply the computational power for both research and industry. Technology giants like Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu and more recently DeepSeek are building competitive large-scale models and high-performance hardware alternatives. Even with export controls limiting access to the most advanced chips, Chinese researchers are optimising algorithms to perform efficiently on domestic hardware - a hallmark of innovation under constraint. China's advantage also lies in scale. With 1.4 billion people and massive digital platforms, it generates data at a volume unmatched in other locations. This fuels rapid progress in model training and deployment. Meanwhile, China now produces more PhDs in the sciences than anywhere else, ensuring a deep pool of AI expertise to sustain momentum. More data, more talent and more coordinated investment create a self-accelerating loop that drives both research and industrial adoption. If current trends continue, Huang's words could prove prophetic. China's combination of scale, strategy and coordination gives it a real prospect of emerging as the world's leading force in AI development and deployment. For the west, that could mean adapting to a landscape where standards, platforms and priorities are increasingly shaped by Chinese institutions and industrial ecosystems. But the future of AI should not be viewed as a zero-sum contest. The most meaningful progress will come from open, responsible collaboration, balanced with sensible export controls and safeguards for dual-use technologies. Seeing AI as a shared race for human progress might just help us advance further together. No Sean Kenji Starrs, Lecturer in International Development, King's College London We should first make clear how far ahead the US is. As of early November 2025, it boasts all of the world's top ten AI firms by market value as well as 37 of the top 50. Nvidia is at number one, having become the first company to be valued at US$5 trillion a few days before Huang's speech. China has just four AI firms in the top 50 - the same as Israel. This list excludes major unlisted Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek (valuation US$15 billion), but also much bigger private US players: OpenAI (US$500 billion), Anthropic (US$183 billion) and Databricks (US$100 billion). Where the US really blows China out of the water is in AI compute power, driven by its access to the world's most advanced chips. The US has total AI compute of 39.7 million petaflops - half of the world's total (by summer 2025 numbers). China's compute is the world's seventh largest with 400,000 petaflops, far below even India's 1.2 million petaflops. This is the result of the US export ban on Nvidia and AMD's most advanced chips, and is despite the fact that China has 46% (230) of the world's AI data clusters. Read more: DeepSeek: how China's embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake With the launch of its low-cost high-performance large language model in January 2025, DeepSeek showed that Chinese firms can innovate around US export constraints and develop comparable AI models using far less resources. But DeepSeek could draw upon Nvidia chips stockpiled before the ban in 2023-24. An insider has also claimed that DeepSeek secretly had access to 50,000 Nvidia H100s, very advanced chips which were never cleared for export to China (though a review by Nvidia claimed this wasn't accurate). Meanwhile in September 2025, DeepSeek admitted that its model "unintentionally" distilled OpenAI's ChatGPT (along with Anthropic's Claude), underlining its reliance on US technology. The massive headstart that US rivals have will likely only grow as they continually having unrestricted access to the world's most advanced chips, as well as capital spending of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a marathon for the long-term, not a dash, and China is running with much weaker legs. Huang made his prediction about the AI race despite surely knowing better. It's true that China has cheaper electricity, but they need a lot more of it because their AI chips are not only much slower but require more energy than Nvidia's most advanced chips. Daily energy costs for US AI firms are a rounding error compared to their hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure. US firms also have access to data centres in allied countries, including in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These two nations have a combined 30.3 million petaflops of AI compute, which was built by US firms on condition they both severed ties with Chinese competitors. What Huang really wants is for the Trump administration to ditch US export controls of his topline AI chips to China. But this isn't going to happen. We live in a new era of "techno-nationalist globalisation" where major powers see national ownership of advanced technology as core to their security and geopolitical rivalry. The era of "free trade" is over. Huang should take solace in the fact that he helms the most valuable company in history, and not peddle in self-interested alarmism.

What if the AI race isn't about chips at all?

China is going to win the artificial intelligence race, says Jensen Huang. At first glance, it is easy to assume Nvidia's billionaire founder is just talking his book. Nvidia does stand to gain the most from any narrative that encourages the US to step up its investment in AI or ease regulatory restrictions on its development, thus boosting demand for Nvidia chips. But does he have a point? Not long ago, about a fifth of Nvidia's data centre revenue came from China. Its fortunes depend on a steady stream of orders for its chips from governments, cloud providers and AI research labs around the world. The fear of China pulling ahead in AI reinforces that demand. Still, Huang's warning may hold some truth. AI development has started shifting from being limited primarily by high-end chip availability to being constrained by electricity supply. A GPT-4 model can use up to 463,269 megawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to research by academics at the University of Rhode Island, University of Tunis and Providence College. That is more than the annual energy consumption of more than 35,000 US homes. This demand reflects the expanding share of AI workloads in data centre electricity consumption. Global use of electricity by data centres is projected to more than double by 2030, and will reach about 1,800 terawatt-hours by 2040, enough to power 150mn US homes for a year, according to Rystad Energy. As a result, the price and availability of power will increasingly determine the pace of AI progress. Here, China has a head start. Last year, it added a record amount of renewable energy capacity, mostly from new solar and wind installations. Solar power alone expanded by about 277 gigawatts, while wind contributed about 80GW, bringing total new renewable capacity to more than 356GW, far exceeding total capacity in the US. This renewable surge is part of a bigger plan. Beijing has linked industrial policy to its efforts to reinforce the national grid, developing large solar projects in Inner Mongolia, expanding hydropower in Sichuan and building high-voltage transmission lines to move cheaper inland electricity to coastal demand centres. Local authorities are also granting preferential electricity rates to companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance to boost local AI computing. These subsidies help to offset the lower efficiency of domestic chips from Huawei, allowing China to train AI models at a lower overall cost. Meanwhile, in the US, wholesale electricity costs have been rising, with prices today as much as 267 per cent higher than five years ago in areas near data centres. But investment in many types of renewable projects, including large-scale wind and solar, fell in the US during the first half of the year, reflecting policy shifts and regulatory uncertainty. The White House has also detailed an executive order ending subsidies for wind and solar power. Some argue that China's energy advantage cannot fully compensate for its lag in chips and models. Indeed, Nvidia's H100 and Blackwell graphics processing units remain ahead of Chinese alternatives such as Huawei's Ascend 910B in terms of memory bandwidth and performance. That imbalance would have been critical in the hardware-dominated phase of technological competition, when access to advanced chips powering computers and smartphones determined who led entire industries. The US, for example, curbed Huawei's ascent by restricting its supply of high-end chips starting in 2019. Yet the difference today is that energy has now started to scale faster than transistors: chip performance gains have slowed to single digits while China's renewable generation continues to expand at double-digit rates each year. Declining electricity costs expand the amount of computation that can be purchased for the same budget, and expanding grid capacity allows models to be trained more frequently for longer durations. The race to master AI is new but it is part of a centuries-old story. Throughout history, every technological superpower has risen on the back of cheap energy. Cheap, abundant coal powered Britain's Industrial Revolution. In the US, oil and hydroelectric power fuelled its dominance in manufacturing and military technology during the 20th century. The battle to control AI is often framed as a contest for chips and the controls that govern them. But power will belong to those who can keep the AI models running.

'China is going to win the AI race' -- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang decries the price of electricity in the US, contrasts it with China's subsidized pricing

Jensen Huang made this controversial comment on the sidelines of the Future of AI Summit. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Washington has lost its edge in artificial intelligence and warns that China will win the AI race. He cited the West's cynicism, export controls, and favorable energy circumstances in China as the reason, claiming it is much easier for companies to access energy in the country. The chief of the most valuable company in the world by market cap has long been saying that the U.S. ban on chip exports is a failure, and that the spread of its advanced semiconductors is vital for it to retain its competitive advantage globally. However, the ongoing trade war between the two powers has resulted in export bans of Blackwell chips from the White House on the one hand, and the CCP banning foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers on the other. Because of this, Nvidia's market share in China has since dropped to basically zero, which probably led to Huang's statement to the Financial Times. "China is going to win the AI race," Jensen commented. He also added that "we need more optimism," saying that the West's cynicism is holding it back. Huang released a statement on Nvidia's X account a few hours after FT published his words. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide." The Nvidia CEO previously mentioned this in late September on a podcast, leaning on his stance that he's been preaching for over a year that export restrictions on his company's AI chips are detrimental to the U.S.'s long-term interests. Huang argues that if China loses access to Nvidia's latest AI GPUs, its tech companies will be forced to purchase homegrown alternatives, which will pour money into its chip makers and further drive research, development, and innovations in the local semiconductor industry. Aside from that, it will also reduce these companies' dependence on Nvidia's software ecosystem, making it easier for them to migrate to a Chinese AI processor. On the other hand, other industry leaders contend that the U.S. is heavily dependent on China and that it's only using Nvidia's products as a stopgap until it builds a credible competitor to the AI chip powerhouse. The comments come just days after the administration hinted that China could have access to Nvidia Blackwell chips, but only once they are out of date. Aside from export controls, Nvidia's top executive also highlighted China's approach to energy subsidies that make it easier for companies to put up power-hungry data centers, versus the hodgepodge of rules the different States in the U.S. are pushing on AI, potentially resulting in "50 new regulations." Experts have been saying that electricity generation is the next bottleneck that the AI industry must solve, and it seems that Beijing is miles ahead, as it has already addressed the energy problem for its AI infrastructure. On the other hand, American tech companies are still investing in alternative power sources like small modular reactors and space-based data centers, which will take years to materialize, if at all. Recently, Microsoft revealed it has GPUs it simply can't plug in because it doesn't have the energy required. The status of the AI race between the two global rivals isn't clear, especially as politics and protectionism are muddying the waters. Aside from that, both sides' arguments for and against China getting access to Nvidia's AI GPUs have merit, meaning we will probably only truly see who is right years down the line. But one thing is clear in all of this -- Nvidia will get a massive advantage if it supplies the chips that both sides use in the AI race.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang softens his 'China will win the AI race' remark to FT

Jensen Huang attends a reception for the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, at St James' Palace in London, Brirain, Nov. 5, 2025. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly told the Financial Times on Wednesday that "China is going to win the AI race," only to release a notably softer statement soon after. The prolific tech leader was speaking on the sidelines of the FT's Future of AI Summit, where he warned that China would beat the U.S. in artificial intelligence thanks to lower energy costs and looser regulations. The comments, which CNBC could not verify independently, would represent Huang's starkest warning yet that the U.S. is at risk of losing its global lead in advanced AI technologies. However, several hours after the FT published its report, Nvidia issued a separate statement from Jensen on an official X account. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," he added. Huang has long stated that the U.S. can stay ahead in the AI race if it keeps developers reliant on Nvidia's leading AI chips -- an argument the CEO has used to lobby against export restrictions on his company's sales to China. Following meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump in July, it seemed that Huang's efforts had paid off, with Washington agreeing to ease some of its chip curbs. Under the plan, Nvidia and competing AI chip company AMD had agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of their Chinese revenues from sales of existing AI processors tailored for the market. However, Beijing has since shut Nvidia out of the market as it conducts a national security review of its chips, with Huang stating that the firm's market share has been reduced to zero. It remains unclear whether China will allow any of Nvidia's chips to return, as officials push domestic tech companies towards its domestic AI chip alternatives. However, some experts have speculated that Beijing is using Nvidia's market access as leverage in trade negotiations or to push Washington for wider access to advanced semiconductors. Huang was in South Korea last month, during Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Highly anticipated trade talks between the two leaders did not yield any concessions from either side on chip policy. According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump had initially sought to discuss a request by Huang to allow sales of a new generation of AI chips to China. However, top officials rallied against the idea, the Journal reported, citing anonymous current and former administration officials familiar with the matter. Now that Nvidia's access to China remains frozen, it appears Huang is shifting his attention to other matters he considers essential to Nvidia's growth and the AI race. In the interview with the FT, Huang reportedly expressed concerns that the West, including the U.S, was being held back by "cynicism" and excessive regulation -- contrasting that with China's energy subsidies aimed at lowering costs for local developers using domestic chips.

Nvidia CEO Says China 'Will Win' the Global AI Race as the U.S. Falls Behind in Energy

The chief executive of AI darling Nvidia has a sharp prediction about who will dominate the global AI market. "China is going to win the AI race," Jensen Huang told the Financial Times on Wednesday. The reason, according to Huang, is U.S. regulation, specifically new state-level AI rules that he claims could result in "50 new regulations." But the U.S. has no federal AI regulation, and Trump's AI Action Plan is focused on deregulation. In the absence of federal oversight, some states, like California, have taken matters into their own hands. Meanwhile, China introduced its first national AI regulation in 2023 and recently started enacting new labeling rules for AI-generated content. In other words, it's hard to say what Huang is talking about. Huang, like many others in the AI industry, also worries about energy. AI has a monstrous energy demand, one that has caused strain on local communities where data centers are placed, and many fear that one of the major potential bottlenecks to AI progress could be the supply of power. Huang has been courting the Department of Energy, likely for this reason. Last week, Nvidia announced that it will build seven giant AI supercomputers for the Department. Following the announcement, Huang declared that he is "so grateful that President Trump is pro-energy," adding that it is the way "to win the AI race or to win any industrial race." But according to Huang's latest comments, Trump's current energy stance might still not be enough for Nvidia. One of the reasons why he believes China will beat the U.S. in the AI game is because of Chinese energy subsidies for data centers, which have reportedly boosted China's already booming domestic chip industry. "Power is free," Huang told the FT. According to a recent report by the Financial Times, China's increased subsidies have helped the country's data centers cut energy bills by up to half. Only data centers that use domestic chips are qualified for the subsidies, according to the report. China can provide the energy subsidies because it boasts a power grid that is much larger and much more efficient than that of the United States. According to experts, the Chinese grid is more than ready for AI growth. Much of that is thanks to China's aggressive embrace of renewable energy. In May 2025, China installed enough wind turbines and solar panels to generate as much electricity as the entire nation of Poland. In 2024, China's wind and solar power projects accounted for more than half of the global increase. Meanwhile, stateside, the Trump administration has been waging a war on clean energy. In an effort to "drill, baby drill," the administration has killed billions of dollars in clean energy projects and waged a nonsensical war against wind power. Huang's comments came a week after Trump met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in South Korea. Ahead of the meeting, Huang said that he would be flying out to South Korea to meet the President very soon, but did not specify whether he would join the meeting between the two world leaders. Trump, on his flight over to South Korea, insinuated that he would be discussing the sale of Nvidia's Blackwell model chips to China in the meeting. But come Thursday's meeting, Trump told reporters that Nvidia's ability to sell Blackwell chips to China did not come up. Then, on Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump administration was not interested in selling the chips to China at this time, putting an end to the speculation for now. Huang is towing a delicate line between the two countries. As an American company, Nvidia needs the Trump administration's support to continue its meteoric rise to success, which helped the company become the first to reach $5 trillion market value last week. But on the other hand, China is (or at least used to be) one of the AI giant's most significant markets, as Nvidia chips had a total chokehold on the Chinese chip market. With Beijing pushing to decouple its AI industry from American tech, the future of that dominance is uncertain.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang says China 'will win' AI race with US

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has warned that China will beat the US in the artificial intelligence race, thanks to lower energy costs and looser regulations. In the starkest comments yet from the head of the world's most valuable company, Huang told the FT: "China is going to win the AI race." Huang's remarks come after the Trump administration maintained a ban on California-based Nvidia selling its most advanced chips to Beijing following a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week. The Nvidia chief said that the west, including the US and UK, was being held back by "cynicism". "We need more optimism," Huang said on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit. Huang singled out new rules on AI by US states that could result in "50 new regulations". He contrasted that approach with Chinese energy subsidies that made it more affordable for local tech companies to run Chinese alternatives to Nvidia's AI chips. "Power is free," he said. The FT reported this week that China has boosted energy subsidies for several large data centres run by Chinese tech giants including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. Local governments have beefed up power incentives after Chinese tech groups complained to regulators about the increased costs of using domestic semiconductors from companies such as Huawei and Cambricon, people familiar with the matter said. Most such systems are less energy-efficient than those made by Nvidia. Huang has previously warned that the latest American AI models were not far ahead of their Chinese rivals, urging the US government to open up the market to its chips to keep the rest of the world dependent on its technology. But following his meeting with Xi, Trump said last week that he did not want to let China use Nvidia's cutting-edge Blackwell chips. "The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States," Trump told CBS. "We will let them deal with Nvidia but not in terms of the most advanced." Nvidia held a developer conference in Washington DC last week, underscoring the chipmaker's efforts to win allies in government. The group's market capitalisation hit $5tn for the first time last week, propelled by Trump's comments that he planned to discuss Blackwell with Xi in South Korea. But their talk did not ultimately cover the topic, the US president later told reporters. Trump had previously suggested Nvidia would regain access to China for a modified version of its latest processors. "It's possible I'd make a deal" on a version of Blackwell that was "enhanced in a negative way", the US president said in August. His comments came after Nvidia and AMD agreed to pay the US government 15 per cent of Chinese revenues from sales of existing AI processors tailored for the market. The US has not yet adopted the regulations needed to allow such sales. US concern over Chinese progress in AI has been building all year since DeepSeek, a small Chinese AI lab, stunned the world with the sophistication of its large language model. The release of the DeepSeek model in January sparked a frenzied debate in Silicon Valley about whether better resourced US AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, could defend their technical edge.

Nvidia CEO says China ban will make them win the AI race

China's vast developer ecosystem continues advancing despite limited access to top hardware Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has raised eyebrows by declaring, "China is going to win the AI race," as it is only nanoseconds behind the United States in artificial intelligence development. Adding that society could benefit from a bit less "cynicism," Huang said he believes the US must maintain its competitive edge and engage China's massive developer base, because excluding them could create long-term consequences for global AI adoption. "It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on X. Nvidia has faced restrictions in China due to governmental policies, preventing the sale of its latest processors, central to AI tools and applications, which are essential for research, deployment, and scaling of AI workloads. Huang suggested limiting Chinese access may inadvertently slow the spread of American technology, even as policymakers focus on national security. Hardware remains central to AI supremacy, as CPU performance and specialized accelerators give data centers the capacity to process the vast information required to train large AI models. Huang pointed out maintaining a leading position in AI requires not only advanced chips but also widespread adoption of tools built on American technology. Data centers equipped with these processors underpin global experimentation, and exclusion from China risks creating parallel systems outside US influence. Government policy decisions regarding chip exports are also central to this debate, with President Trump having said Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chips should be reserved for American users, with China having limited interactions. Huang warned that overly restrictive policies could hinder US influence, as Chinese developers continue to innovate within their own ecosystem. The United States continues to hold technological leadership, but China's rapidly growing developer base and increasing AI capabilities make the global race highly competitive. "We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that," Huang said at a recent Nvidia developers' conference. "We want the world to be built on American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's AI developers is not beneficial in the long term, it hurts us more," he added. Via Financial Times

Nvidia CEO says China on track "to win the AI race"

Huang's warning reflected an apparent frustration with mounting calls for regulation in the U.S. What they're saying: On the sidelines of an FT conference in London Wednesday, Huang said that states in the U.S. were considering new rules that could result in "50 new regulations," while Beijing was subsidizing energy costs to encourage local companies to run Chinese alternatives to his company's chips. * "China is going to win the AI race," he told the FT . State of play: His comments follow the Trump administration's continued ban on sales of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China even after President Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. * Huang has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the Chinese market, not only as a lucrative, $50 billion business opportunity for his company but for the degree of research being done there. * "About 50% of the world's AI researchers are in China," he noted in August. * "The vast majority of the leading open source models are created in China," Huang said then. "And so it's fairly important, I think, for the American technology companies to be able to address that market." Catch up quick: Huang has often referred to the competition over AI with China . * At a tech conference in April, he said that China was "right behind" the U.S. in terms of its AI models, per CNBC. "Remember, this is a long-term, infinite race," he said. * And as recently as Nvidia conference in Washington, D.C., last week, Huang sounded more optimistic, saying: "It is absolutely the case that we can lose this race. But we are well ahead today." At that conference, Huang called for policies to increase energy production and attract AI developers with the goal of the U.S. winning 80% of the global AI market. What we're watching: Whether the Nvidia CEO's warning will prompt the Trump administration to take further steps to promote data center development and stave off state regulatory efforts.

Nvidia CEO Says China Is "Going to Win" the AI Race

So much for America first -- after three months of touting a future in which US tech rules the world, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang seems to be giving up. In a new interview the Financial Times, Huang said that "China is going to win the AI race." He added that China will defeat the US due to lower energy costs and looser regulations, while the West is paralyzed by "cynicism" -- an astonishing admission about the technological capabilities of a country which multiple presidential administrations have taken pains to hinder. The comment comes a week after Trump's trade meeting with PRC President Xi Jinping, where Nvidia's AI chips were supposed to take center stage. Nvidia's chips were seen as a key asset in the economic competition with China, but the PRC recently stopped importing them in favor of its own home-baked competitors. Huang and his fellow tech CEOs had previously hoped the US government could arrange to get the People's Republic hooked on US tech. "President Trump understands that having the world build AI on American tech stack helps America win the AI race," Huang told Fox News in August. "And he wants American technology all over the world so that the whole world is built on the American standard, like the US Dollar is the global standard." Instead, Trump's meeting with Xi has largely been seen as a failure, with the famously hawkish FT admitting China now looks like a "peer rival" to the US. This stems partly from the trade meeting itself -- Trump gave up more than Xi, backing down months of tariff threats. But Huang's comments also highlight China's rapidly expanding electrical grid, which stands in stark contrast to the sorry state of energy infrastructure in the US. With that said, the Nvidia CEO's comments also read like an effort to give Trump a sharp kick in the pants -- though the chronically acrimonious Trump is probably just as likely to turn on Huang.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says 'China is going to win the AI race'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is walking back comments he made about who's winning the battle for supremacy in artificial intelligence. The Financial Times on Wednesday quoted Huang as saying that "China is going to win the AI race," comments he made on the sidelines of the news outlet's Future of AI Summit. Huang reportedly cited lower energy costs and looser regulations as the reasons. Hours after that report came out, Nvidia released a statement from Huang via social media that hedged those comments. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI," he said. "It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide." Huang has, in fact, said many times that the race between the two counties is separated by nanoseconds, which he has used as a rationale for his argument that his company should be allowed to sell its chips in the country. Doing so, he said, would make China dependent on the U.S. In July, it appeared that argument had been successful, as the White House lifted the ban on select AI chip sales to China. Beijing has turned the tables, though, shutting Nvidia out of the market, saying it plans to conduct a national security review of the company's chips. Huang has said since that Nvidia's market share in China is now zero. Trump, meanwhile, has said the company cannot sell its most powerful chips to China. The Financial Times quoted Huang as saying the U.S. and other Western countries are being held back by "cynicism" and excessive regulation concerning AI, while China offers energy subsidies that lower costs for companies that use Chinese-developed chips. Nvidia has a financial interest in the AI arms race, of course. The company last week saw its market cap top $5 trillion, the first to hit that milestone, and it announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia. Nvidia stock is up more than 41% so far this year, and more than 1,200% over the last five years.

Nvidia CEO clarifies remarks about China winning 'AI race'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday clarified his remarks warning that China would "win the AI race," suggesting Beijing is close behind the U.S. on artificial intelligence technology and that it is "vital" for Washington to pull ahead. In an interview with the Financial Times, Huang offered a stark assessment: "China is going to win the AI race." He pointed to state AI regulations in the U.S. and lower energy costs in China as key factors. The Nvidia chief later Wednesday issued another statement, seeking to explain his earlier comment. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," he said in the statement, posted to social platform X. Nvidia saw its stock dip Wednesday afternoon. However, the chipmaker is still the world's most valuable company. It became the first firm to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion last week. The company's rapid rise has been closely tied to the AI boom, as its chips remain central to the technology's development. As both the U.S. and China race to develop the emerging tech, Nvidia has found itself in a complicated position, seeking to sell to both superpowers. It scored a major win earlier this year when the Trump administration reversed course and allowed the company to sell its H20 chips to China in exchange for a 15 percent cut of revenue. However, Beijing has reportedly since barred major domestic tech firms from purchasing those chips, as it seeks to develop its own chipmaking capabilities. Amid the ever-fluctuating trade relationship between the U.S. and China, Huang has increasingly embraced President Trump. At the company's first conference in Washington last week, the CEO touted Trump's energy and manufacturing policies and borrowed his signature phrase in thanking the crowd for "making America great again."

Nvidia's Jensen Huang: 'China is going to win the AI race,' FT reports - The Economic Times

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned that China could overtake the US in the AI race, calling the nations "nanoseconds apart." He urged America to lead by expanding its global developer base but cautioned that excluding China could harm long-term progress. Huang stressed balanced policies for sustainable AI dominance.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned that China will beat the United States in the artificial intelligence race, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. "China is going to win the AI race," Huang told the newspaper on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement posted on X late on Wednesday. "It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," he added. The artificial intelligence chip leader's chief in October said that the U.S. can win the AI battle if the world, including China's massive developer base, runs on Nvidia systems. He, however, lamented that the Chinese government has shut it out of its market. China's access to advanced AI chips, particularly those produced by Nvidia - the world's most valuable company by market capitalization - remains a flashpoint in its tech rivalry with the United States, as both nations vie for supremacy in cutting-edge computing and artificial intelligence. "We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that," Huang said in the Nvidia developers' conference held in Washington last month. "We want the world to be built on American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's AI developers is not beneficial in the long term, it hurts us more," he added. U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chips should be reserved exclusively for American customers. Nvidia has not applied for U.S. export licenses to sell the chips in China, citing Beijing's stance toward the company, CEO Jensen Huang previously said. Trump added that Washington would allow China to engage with Nvidia, but "not in terms of the most advanced" semiconductors.

"China Is Only Nanoseconds Behind the U.S. in AI," Claims NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang as the Firm Battles a High-Stakes Business Deadlock

NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, has once again raised the topic of competition between the US and China in the AI race, claiming that America is only 'nanoseconds' ahead. Well, the NVIDIA-China fiasco is something that Jensen seems to be particularly bothered by in recent times, especially since the firm cannot find its way out of the deadlock regarding the solution to offer for the Chinese AI market. The prospects of a Blackwell-based chip look gloomier than ever, and reintroducing Hopper means that NVIDIA will enter China with a subpar AI chip. More importantly, when you factor in political conflicts and regulatory concerns from both the US and China, it appears that Team Green cannot find a way out of this 'mudpit'. In a statement, Jensen Huang claims that China is just 'nanoseconds' away from meeting the US in terms of technological parity, and interestingly, the gap between both nations has shortened from 'years' to 'seconds' in just a few months. This is attributed to the fact that China's AI industry has grown rapidly in the past few months, as its avoidance of the Western tech stack has led domestic companies to focus heavily on developing capable AI solutions. Companies like Huawei have introduced technologies that compete with those of NVIDIA's Vera Rubin. China has been a 'hotspot' for NVIDIA and the US administration, since, according to a report by the WSJ, there are officials within the government who are reluctant towards the American AI tech stack being adopted by China. Whereas Jensen, on the other hand, claims that it's "absolutely vital" for American developers and technologies to be in China, to "win the race", and it appears that this statement comes at a time when President Trump announced that Blackwell won't be available for China. It would be interesting to see how the matter evolves moving forward, since the only option for Team Green right now is to receive approval for their Blackwell chips. However, even with that, Beijing remains 'hostile' to NVIDIA's AI chips.

Jensen Huang Warns China Will Win The AI Race Days After Donald Trump Said US Won't Let 'Anybody' Have Nvidia's Most Advanced Chips - Alibaba Gr Hldgs (NYSE:BABA), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)

On Wednesday, Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang warned that China is poised to surpass the U.S. in artificial intelligence development, citing cheaper energy and looser regulations that give Beijing an edge. China's AI Advantage: Cheaper Power And Government Support Speaking on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit, Huang told the publication that China will win the AI race. He cited Beijing's subsidized electricity and streamlined regulations that make AI development more cost-effective. The Nvidia CEO contrasted this with Western countries like the U.S. and U.K., which are being held back by "cynicism" and a growing wave of AI rules. Huang also highlighted that Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance, Alibaba Group Holdings (NYSE:BABA) and Tencent Holdings (OTC:TCEHY), benefit from energy subsidies that made it cheaper for domestic tech firms to operate AI systems powered by Chinese-made chips instead of Nvidia's. See Also: Palantir Could Be Nvidia's Fastest Route To $500 Billion In AI Software -- Cathie Wood Saw It Coming US Chip Restrictions And Trump's Stance The comments come days after President Donald Trump confirmed that the U.S. would not allow China access to Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell AI chips. "Will not let anybody have them other than the United States," Trump told CBS during an Oct. 31 interview. Despite the restrictions, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) have agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of Chinese revenues from existing AI chips tailored for the Chinese market. However, full regulatory approval for these sales has not yet been finalized. China Bans Foreign AI Chips In State-Funded Data Centers Meanwhile, Beijing has reportedly ordered a ban on foreign AI chips in state-backed data centers, escalating the U.S.-China tech war. China now reportedly requires all new state-funded data center projects to use only domestically made AI chips. The directive applies to facilities less than 30% complete, which must remove or forgo foreign chips, while near-finished projects will be reviewed individually. Separately, reports indicate China has increased subsidies for major data centers, cutting energy costs by up to 50% to bolster homegrown chipmakers and boost global competitiveness. Nvidia shares fell 1.75% on Wednesday but rose 0.56% in after-hours trading. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings highlight the stock's strong Momentum, Growth and Quality, with a sustained upward trend across short, medium and long-term time frames. Click here to see how it compares with peers and competitors. Read Next: After Google's $2.7B Acquisition Of Founders And Staff, This AI Startup Abandons Large Language Model Plans And Shifts Focus Away From Chatbots Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo: jamesonwu1972 / Shutterstock.com AMDAdvanced Micro Devices Inc$255.512.18%OverviewBABAAlibaba Group Holding Ltd$165.800.91%NVDANVIDIA Corp$196.30-1.20%TCEHYTencent Holdings Ltd$81.311.32%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "US must encourage innovation to maintain its leadership in AI"

China is currently blocking Nvidia's access to the Chinese market, which could be used as leverage in trade negotiations or to promote domestic AI chips. , CEO of , has sparked controversy with his remarks on the future of artificial intelligence. During his speech at a event on AI, he initially suggested that was on the verge of overtaking the in the AI race due to factors such as cheaper energy and less strict regulation. However, Huang later released a revised statement on social media, stressing that while is close, it is essential for the to maintain its leadership by fostering innovation and attracting international developers. Huang's chip strategy Huang has consistently argued that for the to succeed in this area, it is crucial that developers can continue to rely on Nvidia's advanced AI chips. He has actively lobbied against export restrictions on sales to , as he believes access to these chips is vital for ongoing progress. Despite early signs of a breakthrough following meetings with , is currently facing a complete blockade from the Chinese market due to an ongoing national security review. This has resulted in a significant loss of market share for , raising questions about whether its chips will be allowed back into . Additionally, it highlights Beijing's push for domestic alternatives to AI chips. Strategic influence Some experts believe that China's actions are driven by strategic considerations, with Nvidia's market access potentially being used as leverage in trade negotiations or to gain greater access to advanced semiconductors. Huang's recent comments also highlight growing concern about the potential for "cynicism" and excessive regulation in the West to hamper progress in AI, in contrast to China's favorable environment thanks to energy subsidies aimed at lowering development costs for local companies using domestic chips. Follow Business AM on Want access to all articles? Take advantage of our promotion and subscribe here!

Nvidia's Jensen Huang: 'China is going to win the AI race,' FT reports

(Reuters) -Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned that China will beat the United States in the artificial intelligence race, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. "China is going to win the AI race," Huang told the newspaper on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit. "As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement posted on X late on Wednesday. "It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," he added. The artificial intelligence chip leader's chief in October said that the U.S. can win the AI battle if the world, including China's massive developer base, runs on Nvidia systems. He, however, lamented that the Chinese government has shut it out of its market. China's access to advanced AI chips, particularly those produced by Nvidia -- the world's most valuable company by market capitalization -- remains a flashpoint in its tech rivalry with the United States, as both nations vie for supremacy in cutting-edge computing and artificial intelligence. "We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that," Huang said in the Nvidia developers' conference held in Washington last month. "We want the world to be built on American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's AI developers is not beneficial in the long term, it hurts us more," he added. U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chips should be reserved exclusively for American customers. Nvidia has not applied for U.S. export licenses to sell the chips in China, citing Beijing's stance toward the company, CEO Jensen Huang previously said. Trump added that Washington would allow China to engage with Nvidia, but "not in terms of the most advanced" semiconductors. (Reporting by Anusha Shah and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)