Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang defends selling AI chips to China amid national security debate

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang 'nearly lost his composure' when pressed on selling chips to China -- 'You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser'

The Nvidia boss says that keeping Chinese AI researchers using the American tech stack is a good thing for the U.S. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got into a heated debate during a recent podcast, during which he talked with Dwarkesh Patel about whether the U.S. should be selling chips to China. During part of the conversation, which you can see below by expanding the tweet, Patel said he doesn't know whether it's actually good to give Chinese access to AI chips. Still, since he likes to play devil's advocate during his interviews, where he takes an opposing stance to his guest, he asked the leader-clad chief of the world's largest AI chipmaker if doing so is a threat to American companies and national security. Patel gave Anthropic's Claude Mythos as an example for his argument, which apparently revealed "thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities" in "every major operating system and every major web browser." He said that if China had access to the massive amounts of compute that Nvidia delivers, it could probably have used it to develop cyber-offensive capabilities that threaten the United States' security. Huang had a fairly nuanced response to this, but he also first pointed out that Mythos was trained on "fairly mundane capacity, and a fairly mundane amount of it." You can expand the tweet above to see the exchange. Jensen says China already has access to a lot of compute power. Although Nvidia still makes the most advanced, most efficient chips, he argues that China can still achieve advanced models through sheer brute force, like Huawei's AI CloudMatrix cluster. So, keeping the chipmaker out of the country would not stop its development of frontier AI models and would only result in Chinese AI being trained outside of the American tech stack. "We want to make sure that all the AI developers in the world are developing on the American tech stack, and making the contributions, the advancements of AI -- especially when it's open source -- available to the American ecosystem," Huang said. "It would be extremely foolish to create two ecosystem: the open-source ecosystem, and it only runs on a foreign tech stack, and a closed ecosystem that runs on the American tech stack. I think that would be a horrible outcome for the United States." Another argument against selling advanced AI chips to China is that it will do the same thing the country did with iPhones and Tesla. While these two products are still leaders in their markets, many Chinese companies are now building products that can compete with them on price, features, and quality. This could also happen in the AI chip industry. If and when Chinese-made AI chips get the same capabilities as Nvidia's latest offerings, couldn't Chinese AI companies just easily switch over to a Chinese AI chip in the future, should it become available, or if Beijing forces them to? "We have to keep innovating and, as you probably know, our share is growing, not decreasing. The premise that even if we competed in China, that we're going to lose that market anyways... You're not talking to somebody who woke up a loser," Huang said. "That loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me." He then went on to say that AI chips aren't as simple as vehicles, where users can easily swap one brand for another daily. "Computing is not like that. There's a reason why the x86 deal exists. There's a reason why ARM is so sticky. These ecosystems are hard to replace; it costs an enormous amount of time and energy, and most people don't want to do it. So, it's our job to continue to nurture that ecosystem, to keep advancing the technology so that we can compete in the marketplace," the Nvidia chief added. "Conceding a marketplace based on the premise you described, I simply can't acknowledge that. It makes no sense. Because I don't think that the United States is a loser. Our industry is not a loser. That losing proposition, that losing mindset, makes no sense to me." The biggest point Jensen makes is that AI technology has five layers -- energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications -- and that none should be ignored just for the sake of one. He says, "Why are you causing one layer of the AI industry to lose an entire market so that you could benefit from another layer of the AI industry? There are five layers, and every single layer has to succeed. The layer that has to succeed most is actually the AI applications. Why are you so fixated on that AI model? That one company? For what reason?" You can watch the complete podcast episode below. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Nvidia's Huang Says Mythos Shows Need for US-China AI Dialogue

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said that Anthropic PBC's Mythos breakthrough shows that the US should seek greater cooperation with China so artificial intelligence researchers in the world's two largest economies can agree on how to safely use the increasingly powerful technology. "We want the United States to win, but I think having a dialogue and having a research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do," Huang said in an interview Wednesday on the technology-focused Dwarkesh Podcast. "It is essential that we try to both agree on what not to use the AI for." Huang expressed concern that US-China tensions over trade and security issues have impeded coordination on crucial research. "This is an area that is glaringly missing because of our current attitude about China as an adversary," he said. "It is essential that our AI researchers and their AI researchers are actually talking." Over the past year, Huang has pressed the Trump administration for relief from US export restrictions that have blocked sales of Nvidia's top AI processors to China on national security grounds. In December, President Donald Trump agreed to allow Nvidia to ship its less advanced H200 AI chips to Chinese customers, a significant easing of measures aimed at restraining China's growth in AI. Huang's push for wider access to the Chinese market has put Nvidia at odds with Anthropic, whose CEO has favored stricter export controls and called the H200 decision a "mistake" in January. Though the two firms have nearly opposite positions on China, Nvidia is one of Anthropic's key suppliers and an investor in the AI company, which makes the popular Claude chatbot. Nvidia is putting $10 billion into Anthropic, though Huang said last month it would likely be the company's last investment. As part of a November deal, which also involved Microsoft Corp., Anthropic is committed to taking as much as 1 gigawatt of computing capacity from Nvidia. When asked whether US export controls have constrained China, Huang said that the Chinese market isn't bound by a lack of computing power due to the country's abundant energy resources, skill in making "mainstream" chips and the ability to bundle more processors together. The amount of computing capacity required to train Anthropic's Mythos model, which has only been released to select companies and government officials due to its powerful cybersecurity capabilities, is "fairly mundane" and "abundantly available in China," he said. "They have so much energy. They have data centers that are sitting completely empty, fully powered," Huang said. "If they wanted to, they can just gang up more chips, even if they're 7-nanometer," he said, referring to a less advanced chip manufacturing process. "Their capacity of building chips is one of the largest in the world," he said.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be 'horrible outcome' for America

In short: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned on the Dwarkesh Podcast that DeepSeek optimising its AI models for Huawei's Ascend chips instead of American hardware would be "a horrible outcome" for the United States, as the Chinese AI lab prepares to launch its V4 foundation model on Huawei's Ascend 950PR processor. The migration from Nvidia's CUDA to Huawei's CANN framework threatens to break the software-hardware dependency underpinning American AI dominance, even as US lawmakers push to place DeepSeek on the entity list for export control. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on the Dwarkesh Podcast on Wednesday that if DeepSeek optimised its new AI models to run on Huawei chips rather than American hardware, it would be "a horrible outcome" for the United States. The warning frames the emerging partnership between China's most capable AI lab and its most advanced chipmaker as a direct threat to the technological leverage that has underpinned American AI dominance for the past decade. "If future AI models are optimised in a very different way than the American tech stack," Huang said, and as "AI diffuses out into the rest of the world" with Chinese standards and technology, China "will become superior to" the US. The statement is notable because it comes from the CEO of the company that has benefited most from the current arrangement, in which virtually every frontier AI model in the world is trained on Nvidia GPUs using Nvidia's CUDA software framework. DeepSeek is preparing to launch V4, a multimodal foundation model expected later this month. The Information reported earlier in April that V4 would run on Huawei's latest Ascend 950PR processor, while a separate Reuters report suggested the model had been trained on Nvidia's Blackwell chips, which would constitute a violation of US export controls. The two claims are not necessarily contradictory: a model can be trained on one set of hardware and deployed for inference on another. What makes the Huawei integration significant is the software migration behind it. DeepSeek has spent months rewriting its core code to work with Huawei's CANN framework, moving away from the CUDA ecosystem that Nvidia has spent two decades building into the foundation of AI development. CUDA's dominance has functioned as a second layer of American control over AI, beyond the chips themselves. Export restrictions can limit which Nvidia hardware reaches China, but as long as Chinese labs wrote their software for CUDA, they remained dependent on the Nvidia ecosystem even when using alternative processors. DeepSeek's move to CANN breaks that dependency. DeepSeek's V3 model, launched in late 2024, was trained on 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs, a chip tailor-made for the Chinese market that was itself banned from sale to China in 2023. The company has already demonstrated that it can produce frontier-competitive models with fewer resources than its American rivals. Its R1 reasoning model matched or exceeded the performance of models that cost orders of magnitude more to train. V4 would extend that approach by proving the company can do it without American hardware at all. On raw performance, Huawei's chips are not competitive with Nvidia's best. The Ascend 910C, the predecessor to the 950PR, delivers roughly 60% of the inference performance of Nvidia's H100, a chip that is itself two generations behind Nvidia's current best. American chips are approximately five times more powerful than their Chinese equivalents today, and that gap is projected to widen to 17 times by 2027. Huawei is targeting 750,000 AI chip shipments in 2026, but its total production represents only 3 to 5% of Nvidia's aggregate computing power. But Huang's concern is not about the current performance gap. He said on the podcast that even if China had inferior chips, it could still catch up with the US in AI development given its "abundant energy" and "large pool of AI researchers." The implication is that raw hardware performance is only one variable, and that software optimisation, researcher talent, and energy availability can compensate for silicon disadvantages. If V4 performs well on Ascend chips, it validates an alternative path for AI development that does not depend on Nvidia at any point in the supply chain. The situation exposes a tension at the centre of American chip export policy. Nvidia restarted production of the H200, a more powerful chip, for sale in China, as Huang confirmed in March. But China has been blocking H200 imports to protect Huawei's domestic chip business, and Nvidia's CFO has said the company has recorded no revenue from China H200 sales. The controls designed to limit China's AI capabilities are instead accelerating the development of a Chinese alternative. DeepSeek's experience with its R2 model illustrates both the promise and the limits of the Huawei path. R2 was repeatedly delayed because of training failures on Huawei hardware. Chinese authorities had urged DeepSeek to train on domestic chips, but the company encountered stability issues that forced it to revert to Nvidia GPUs for training while using Huawei chips only for inference. The distinction matters: training is the most compute-intensive phase of AI development, and the fact that Huawei chips could not handle it reliably suggests the hardware gap is real. But inference, the phase where models serve users, is where commercial value is generated, and Huawei's chips appear adequate for that purpose. Meanwhile, US lawmakers are pushing to tighten restrictions further. On Thursday, lawmakers and experts accused China of buying "what they can" and stealing "what they cannot" in the AI industry, and called for the government to evaluate placing DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax on the entity list for export control. Huang's warning is ultimately about software-hardware co-design. Nvidia's dominance rests not just on making the fastest chips but on CUDA's position as the default development environment for AI. When researchers write code, they write it for CUDA. When startups build products, they build them on CUDA. When governments invest in AI infrastructure, they buy Nvidia GPUs because that is what the software requires. DeepSeek's migration to CANN threatens to create a parallel ecosystem in which none of that applies. The scale of Nvidia's business makes the stakes concrete. The company's market capitalisation exceeds $3 trillion. Its data centre revenue grew 93% year over year in its most recent quarter. Its chips power the training runs for virtually every major AI model outside China. If the most capable Chinese AI lab demonstrates that competitive models can be built without Nvidia, the argument for maintaining export controls weakens, the argument for buying Nvidia weakens, and the geopolitical assumptions that have shaped AI policy for the past three years come under pressure. None of this means Huawei is about to overtake Nvidia. The performance gap is large and growing. The R2 training failures demonstrate that Chinese hardware is not yet ready for the most demanding AI workloads. But Huang is not warning about today. He is warning about a trajectory in which DeepSeek proves the concept, other labs follow, and the CUDA moat that has made Nvidia the most valuable company in the AI supply chain begins to erode. The fact that the CEO of Nvidia is the one making this argument publicly suggests he believes the risk is no longer theoretical. DeepSeek's V4 will be the first major test. If a multimodal foundation model runs competitively on Huawei silicon, the warning Huang issued on Wednesday will look less like corporate lobbying and more like the most consequential forecast in the AI chip war so far.

'They have ghost cities, they have ghost data centers too': Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns of "enormous" China compute capacity - but says 'we want the United States to win'

* Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urges caution over China compute capacity * China has "enormous" amounts of compute, including lots going unused * Huang says China training a Mythos-esque model could cause issues Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned of the potential threat China poses in terms of harnessing huge amounts of compute power to train its next generation of AI models. Speaking on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast, Huang said China could soon be able to train an AI model equivalent to the likes of Anthropic's recently-announced Claude Mythos - which could have worrying effects on global cybersecurity. Huang also raised concerns on the "enormous" amount of compute China currently has going unused, but said both his company and the US overall should still be in a strong position. Chips and more chips "The amount of capacity and the type of compute (Mythos) was trained on is abundantly available in China, so you just have to first realize that chips exist in China," Huang said, noting how Mythos was trained on a "fairly mundane capacity". "They (China) have datacenters that are sitting completely empty, fully powered," Huang added. "You know, they have ghost cities, they have ghost datacenters too. They have so much infrastructure capacity. If they wanted to, they [could] just gang up more chips...Their capacity of building chips is one of the largest in the world." China already manufactures a huge amount of the chip hardware used across the world, as well as boasting many leading universities and AI researchers - which offers huge potential for collaboration, rather than rivalry, Huang noted. "This is an area that is glaringly missing because of our current attitude about China as an adversary," he said. "It is essential that our AI researchers and their AI researchers are actually talking." "Victimizing them, turning them into an enemy, likely isn't the best answer," he added. "They are an adversary." "We want the United States to win. But I think having a dialogue and having research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do." "It is essential that we try to both agree on what not to use the AI for." Mythos is a key part of Project Glasswing, a new cybersecurity initiative Anthropic is leading along with tech leaders to to identify and fix vulnerabilities in critical software. It quickly gained widespread attention, and OpenAI also recently revealed GPT-5.4-Cyber, its Mythos rival, designed for cybersecurity pros to spot the next level of attacks. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Nvidia CEO Loses His Cool at Tough Question

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Look, being CEO of the largest company by market cap in the world isn't a cakewalk. It takes a tough person not to crack under that kind of pressure -- just ask Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who blew his stack when asked about China on a recent podcast appearance. During a taping of tech guy Dwarkesh Patel's podcast spotted by Tom's Hardware, the Nvidia CEO became agitated when questioned about whether selling advanced AI chips to China poses national security risks to the United States. Playing devil's advocate, Patel referenced Anthropic's Claude Mythos model as evidence that giving China access to Nvidia's high-powered chips could fuel America's competition in the global tech space. "The premise that -- even if we competed in China, that we're going to lose that market anyways -- you're not talking to somebody who woke up a loser," Huang said indignantly. "And that loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me." If Nvidia did pull out of China for fears of enabling fueling the international competition, it would simply fuel a more independent tech industry in the PRC, Huang continued to argue. The key to staying ahead, he seems to insist, is a world hooked on American chips. "We want to make sure that all the AI developers in the world are developing on the American tech stack, and making the contributions, the advancements of AI -- especially when it's open source -- available to the American ecosystem," Huang shot back. "It would be extremely foolish to create two ecosystem: the open-source ecosystem, and it only runs on a foreign [Chinese] tech stack, and a closed ecosystem that runs on the American tech stack. I think that would be a horrible outcome for the United States." The truth may be more complicated than Huang wants to admit. Chinese authorities have increasingly moved to limit the Chinese tech industry's reliance on US-made AI chips, especially in the wake of Donald Trump's trade tariff bonanza in 2025. Nvidia probably has the upper hand in the immediate future, but given the ludicrous pace of Chinese tech development recently, it doesn't take a Fortune 500 CEO to see where the market is ultimately heading.

Jensen Huang says China Can Build Claude Mythos AI Models

The amount of capacity and the type of compute it was trained on is "abundantly available in China," said the Nvidia CEO. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned that China already has the computing power and data center capacity necessary to train an AI model at the same level as Anthropic's AI model Claude Mythos, which could threaten global cybersecurity. Huang was asked in an interview on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast on Wednesday whether the Chinese government's access to chips to train a model like Claude Mythos -- which has cyberoffensive capabilities -- could be a threat to US national security. Mythos was trained on a "fairly mundane capacity," Huang said. "The amount of capacity and the type of compute it was trained on is abundantly available in China, so you just have to first realize that chips exist in China." Anthropic limited access to its new AI model in April after it identified thousands of software vulnerabilities across major operating systems and browsers, raising concerns about potential misuse in cyberattacks. A Chinese-made AI model with the same capability could wreak havoc if misused. Huang said that the amount of compute China has is "enormous." "They have datacenters that are sitting completely empty, fully powered. You know, they have ghost cities, they have ghost datacenters too. They have so much infrastructure capacity. If they wanted to, they [could] just gang up more chips." Huang added that China manufactures 60% of the world's mainstream chips, has some of the best computer scientists, has 50% of the world's AI researchers and an abundance of energy. "Victimizing them, turning them into an enemy, likely isn't the best answer," he said. "They are an adversary." "We want the United States to win. But I think having a dialogue and having research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do." Related: Anthropic limits access to AI model over cyberattack concerns On Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hailed Mythos as a revolutionary step that will keep America ahead of China in the AI race. "This Anthropic Mythos model was a step function change in abilities, learning capabilities," he said, according to Bloomberg. Anthropic released findings on Claude Mythos Preview on April 7, sparking concern that the model could be used in cyberattacks due to its ability to discover and potentially exploit zero-day vulnerabilities. The company also claimed that 99% of the vulnerabilities the model discovered have not been patched yet. Meanwhile, the AI Security Institute (AISI) evaluated Mythos on April 13, finding that the AI model could "execute multi-stage attacks on vulnerable networks and discover and exploit vulnerabilities autonomously," tasks that would take human professionals days of work. AI-boosted hacks with Mythos could also have dire consequences for banks, which often use decades-old software, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Last year, Anthropic reported in November that a "Chinese state-sponsored group" manipulated its Claude Code tool in an attempt to infiltrate about 30 global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang loses his cool -- here's what sparked it

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke in a podcast about selling AI chips to China and global tech competition. He explained that China already has strong computing power and stopping chips may not work. He said companies must keep improving and stay ahead. The discussion also showed tension as different views on security, business, and future AI growth were shared. The drama started during a podcast where Jensen Huang spoke with Dwarkesh Patel about a hot topic -- should the U.S. sell AI chips to China. Patel took a "devil's advocate" role and questioned if giving China powerful AI chips could harm U.S. companies and national security. He used Claude Mythos as an example, saying it reportedly found "thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities" in major systems. Patel argued that if China gets Nvidia-level computing power, it could build strong cyber attack tools against the U.S. Huang replied calmly at first, saying Mythos was trained on "fairly mundane capacity," meaning it didn't need super high-end chips, as stated by Tom's Hardware. He then made a big point -- China already has a lot of computing power, even if it's not as advanced as Nvidia's chips. Huang gave an example of Huawei CloudMatrix, showing China can still build strong AI using brute force. He argued that banning Nvidia chips won't stop China's AI growth -- it will just push them to build outside the U.S. tech system. Huang said the real goal should be to keep global AI development inside the American tech ecosystem. He warned that splitting the world into two systems -- U.S. tech vs foreign tech -- would be a "horrible outcome" for America. Patel then pushed another concern -- China could copy Nvidia's success like it did with iPhone and Tesla, as noted by Tom's Hardware. The idea was that Chinese companies could eventually make cheaper, similar AI chips and replace Nvidia. This is where Huang started getting visibly frustrated during the debate. He fired back strongly, saying Nvidia is still growing and not losing market share. Then came his viral line -- "You're not talking to somebody who woke up a loser." Huang clearly rejected the idea that Nvidia would just lose the China market anyway, calling it a "loser mindset." He explained that chips are not like cars or phones -- you can't easily switch from one system to another. He referenced how ecosystems like x86 architecture and ARM architecture are very "sticky" and hard to replace. Huang said switching tech ecosystems takes huge time, money, and effort -- most companies avoid doing it, as stated by Tom's Hardware. He stressed that Nvidia's job is to keep improving and strengthening its ecosystem to stay ahead. He again refused the idea of "giving up" China, saying it makes no sense for the U.S. to act like a loser. Toward the end, Huang explained his bigger vision of AI -- it has 5 layers: energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications. He said focusing only on AI models (like companies such as Anthropic) is a mistake. According to him, every layer must succeed -- not just one -- for the AI industry to grow properly. He questioned why one part of the industry should lose a whole market just to benefit another part. His final point -- AI applications (what people actually use) matter the most, not just the models behind them. The debate overall stayed intense for about 3 minutes, with Huang showing patience but clearly getting heated at certain moments. Huang believes blocking China is not the solution -- competing globally and staying ahead is, as cited by Tom's Hardware. Q1. Why did Jensen Huang get angry in the debate? He got upset when the idea was raised that Nvidia could lose China, which he strongly disagreed with. Q2. What is the main issue in the Nvidia China chip debate? The debate is about whether selling AI chips to China helps growth or creates security risks for the U.S.

Jensen Huang Warns Against Victimizing China Or Perceiving Them As Adversary: Nvidia CEO Wants US To Win,

China Already Has The AI Resources, Huang Says Speaking in a conversation with Dwarkesh Patel, Huang pushed back on the idea that restricting AI chip exports would significantly slow China's progress. He noted that China already has substantial capabilities, including a strong semiconductor base and a large pool of AI talent. Huang also noted that China is home to many of the world's top AI researchers. He argued that limiting access to U.S. chips won't prevent China from advancing in artificial intelligence. 'Victimizing Them' Could Backfire Huang warned that isolating China could create more risks than benefits. "Victimizing them, turning them into an enemy, likely isn't the best answer," he said. While acknowledging that China is a strategic competitor, Huang said that the importance of maintaining dialogue. "We want the United States to win. But I think having a dialogue and having research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do. This is an area that is glaringly missing because of our current attitude about China as an adversary." He stressed that collaboration between U.S. and Chinese AI researchers is "essential," particularly when it comes to agreeing on how AI should -- and should not -- be used. Risk Of A Split AI Ecosystem One of Huang's biggest concerns is the emergence of two separate AI ecosystems -- one led by the U.S. and another by China. "It would be extremely foolish to create two ecosystems," he said, warning that such a divide could weaken U.S. influence over global AI development. A fragmented landscape, he added, could push open-source innovation toward non-U.S. platforms. China Chipmakers Surge On AI Demand, Nvidia Curbs Earlier this month, reports said Chinese chipmakers are gaining momentum as AI demand, Nvidia-related restrictions and supply constraints drive Beijing's push for a self-reliant semiconductor ecosystem. Domestic firms are reporting record revenues and expect further upside as Chinese tech companies ramp up AI infrastructure spending. Paul Triolo of Albright Stonebridge Group said that U.S. curbs have added "rocket fuel" to demand, while export restrictions on Nvidia chips are accelerating the shift to homegrown alternatives. Companies like Huawei Technologies and Moore Threads are moving to fill the gap, even as their offerings still lag behind U.S. counterparts. Price Action: Nvidia shares closed at $198.87, up 1.20% and edged down 0.19% to $198.50 in after-hours trading, according to Benzinga Pro. NVDA is in the 97th percentile for Quality on Benzinga Edge, reflecting strong performance across short, medium and long-term trends. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo Courtesy: FotoField on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns against curbs on US chip sales to China - The Economic Times

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has cautioned against US restrictions on advanced chip exports to China, warning that the curbs are accelerating Chinese capabilities and hurting American companies. The statements were made on a podcast hosted by Dwarkesh Patel on April 15.Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has cautioned against US restrictions on advanced chip exports to China, warning that the curbs are accelerating Chinese capabilities and hurting American companies. The statements were made on a podcast hosted by Dwarkesh Patel on April 15. In the nearly two-hour conversation, Huang was pressed on security risks tied to selling high-end AI chips to China, with Patel saying that models such as Claude's Mythos variant could potentially enable cyber threats if deployed without restrictions. The Nvidia chief rejected the premise that export bans would meaningfully slow down China's AI ambitions. He argued that China already has the core building blocks including chip manufacturing capabilities, a deep pool of researchers, and expanding data centre infrastructure, which allows it to advance independently. "The idea that restricting chips stops AI development is misguided," Huang indicated, adding that controls imposed since 2022 have instead boosted local competitors such as Huawei and pushed Chinese developers towards domestic alternatives. The Nvidia founder also framed the battle as one over software ecosystems as much as hardware. Defending the company's efforts to keep Chinese developers on Nvidia's CUDA platform, Huang said switching computing ecosystems is far harder than changing consumer products. "We're not a car," he said, arguing that widespread adoption of Nvidia tools helps entrench US technology standards globally. Also Read: Chinese chipmakers claim nearly half of local market as Nvidia's lead shrinks The comments come as Nvidia continues to absorb the commercial fallout of tighter curbs. Reuters reported earlier that the company disclosed a $5.5 billion charge tied to H20 restrictions and later said it lost $2.5 billion in H20 sales in one quarter alone, while expecting an $8 billion hit in the next. In February, Reuters also reported that Nvidia had halted production of China-bound H200 chips as approvals remained stalled. However, on March 26, Huang said that it had been licensed for "many customers in China" for the H200, and received purchase orders from "many" companies, allowing it to resume production of the chip. Also Read: Nvidia's Jensen Huang admits he erred in not backing OpenAI, Anthropic early on

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Urges Direct US-China AI Talks as Mythos Raises Safety Fears

NVIDIA and Anthropic differ on China Chip Export Policy Issues Over the past year, Huang has asked the Trump administration to ease some export restrictions on NVIDIA chip sales to China. Those restrictions were introduced on national security grounds and limited access to the company's most advanced AI processors. In December, the administration allowed NVIDIA to ship its less advanced to Chinese customers. That position has put NVIDIA at odds with Anthropic on China policy. Anthropic's chief executive has supported tighter export controls and said in January that the H200 decision was a "mistake." Even so, the two companies remain closely linked through supply and investment ties. NVIDIA is also investing $10 billion in Anthropic, although Huang said last month that this would likely be the company's last investment in the AI firm. Under a November agreement that also involved Microsoft Corp., Anthropic committed to take as much as one gigawatt of computing capacity from NVIDIA. Therefore, the policy split has not changed the business relationship between the companies.