Nvidia’s Jensen Huang downplays U.S.’ China concerns ahead of trip

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has downplayed U.S. fears that his firm’s chips will aid the Chinese military, days ahead of another trip to the country as he attempts to walk a tightrope between Washington and Beijing. 

In an interview with CNN aired Sunday, Huang said “we don’t have to worry about” China’s military using U.S.-made technology because “they simply can’t rely on it.”

“It could be limited at any time; not to mention, there’s plenty of computing capacity in China already,” Huang said. “They don’t need Nvidia’s chips, certainly, or American tech stacks in order to build their military,” he added.

The comments were made in reference to years of bipartisan U.S. policy that placed restrictions on semiconductor companies, prohibiting them from selling their most advanced artificial intelligence chips to clients in China. 

Huang also repeated past criticisms of the policies, arguing that the tactic of export controls has been counterproductive to the ultimate goal of U.S. tech leadership. 

“We want the American tech stack to be the global standard … in order for us to do that, we have to be in search of all the AI developers in the world,” Huang said, adding that half of the world’s AI developers are in China. 

That means for America to be an AI leader, U.S. technology has to be available to all markets, including China, he added.

Washington’s latest restrictions on Nvidia’s sales to China were implemented in April and are expected to result in billions in losses for the company. In May, Huang said chip restrictions had already cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half.

Huang’s CNN interview came just days before he travels to China for his second trip to the country this year, and as Nvidia is reportedly working on another chip that is compliant with the latest export controls.

Last week, the Nvidia CEO met with U.S. President Donald Trump, and was warned by U.S. lawmakers not to meet with companies connected to China’s military or intelligence bodies, or entities named on America’s restricted export list.

According to Daniel Newman, CEO of tech advisory firm The Futurum Group, Huang’s CNN interview exemplifies how Huang has been threading a needle between Washington and Beijing as it tries to maintain maximum market access.

“He needs to walk a proverbial tightrope to make sure that he doesn’t rattle the Trump administration,” Newman said, adding that he also wants to be in a position for China to invest in Nvidia technology if and when the policy provides a better climate to do so.

But that’s not to say that his downplaying of Washington’s concerns is valid, according to Newman. “I think it’s hard to completely accept the idea that China couldn’t use Nvidia’s most advanced technologies for military use.”

He added that he would expect Nvidia’s technology to be at the core of any country’s AI training, including for use in the development of advanced weaponry. 

A U.S. official told Reuters last month that China’s large language model startup DeepSeek — which says it used Nvidia chips to train its models — was supporting China’s military and intelligence operations. 

On Sunday, Huang acknowledged there were concerns about DeepSeek’s open-source R1 reasoning model being trained in China but said that there was no evidence that it presents dangers for that reason alone.

Huang complimented the R1 reasoning model, calling it “revolutionary,” and said its open-source nature has empowered startup companies, new industries, and countries to be able to engage in AI. 

“The fact of the matter is, [China and the U.S.] are competitors, but we are highly interdependent, and to the extent that we can compete and both aspire to win, it is fine to respect our competitors,” he concluded.