Nvidia Corp chief Jensen Huang blasted the “failure” of US restrictions intended to contain China’s technological ascent, calling on the White House to lower barriers to AI chip sales before American firms cede that market to up-and-coming rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co.
Huang called for policymakers to propel US AI technology by easing export curbs aimed at curtailing the rise of a geopolitical rival. Some corners of Washington are receptive to that argument when it applies to countries like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, which have close ties to China — but Huang has so far failed to turn the tide of restrictions that specifically target the world’s second largest economy.
China alone will account for a US$50 billion opportunity in 2026, Huang told reporters at Computex in Taipei. If American tech providers like Nvidia aren’t allowed in, local customers will just spend that money elsewhere, he said.
The relaxing of restrictions would directly benefit Nvidia, the company at the heart of a global AI infrastructure boom. Huang’s views align with the likes of White House AI adviser David Sacks, who has pushed for ensuring the world builds its AI tools and applications on an American “tech stack” — a full complement of hardware and services based on US know-how. The Trump administration is rescinding restrictions on Nvidia chip shipments to much of the world, though officials are drafting a replacement framework.
US officials have also reaffirmed Washington’s opposition to the use of chips from Huawei, a frontrunner in China’s technology industry, provoking outrage from Beijing.
“All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” Huang told reporters, in some of his harshest criticism yet of the US campaign. “The US should maximize the speed of AI diffusion. Because if we don’t, the competition will come.”
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Emphasizing his point, Huang added that “China has 50% of the world’s AI developers, and it’s important that when they develop on an architecture, they develop on Nvidia, or at least American technology.”
A top Trump administration official acknowledged Huang’s concerns about export controls more broadly but said there was a consensus in Washington to maintain restrictions aimed at containing China’s AI ambitions.
“It’s important to make a distinction between: Are semiconductors being used inside China or elsewhere?” Sriram Krishnan, White House senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Wednesday. “There is still bipartisan and broad concern” about how advanced processors are used once they’re in China, Krishnan said.
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The assumption that the US is the only place that develops and provides AI infrastructure is fundamentally wrong, Huang said.
Behind the scenes at the weeklong tech expo in Taiwan, Huang said he’d met SoftBank Group Corp Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son several times to discuss the US$500 billion Stargate project. That data centre build-out, led by SoftBank and partners including OpenAI, will depend heavily on Nvidia gear, though it has run into snags with securing funding.
Nvidia itself is smarting from controls on the sale of its highest-end chips to China, the world’s largest semiconductor arena.
It’s written off US$5.5 billion in H20 AI chips for the China market — products originally designed to comply with export curbs on higher-performance parts — after the Trump administration extended restrictions to include those semiconductors.
In Taipei on Wednesday, Huang said Nvidia cannot further downgrade those chips to make them compliant, so it’s discarding the inventory. Huang reiterated the warning that if Nvidia can’t sell in China, Huawei and others will fill the gap.
“Power is quite cost-effective in China. And there’s plenty of land. And so the ban on H20 is not effective for that reason,” Huang said.
“They’ll just buy more chips from the startups, from Huawei, and others. And so I really do hope that the US government recognizes that the ban is not effective and give us a chance to go back and win the market.”
