Jensen Huang says U.S. chip restrictions have cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said overnight that U.S. chip export controls are a “failure” and warned that the restrictions are doing more damage to American business than to China.
Huang said in a news conference at Computex, an artificial intelligence trade show in Taiwan, that the policies have cut the AI chip leader’s China market share from 95% to 50% and motivated Beijing to make its own chips faster.
Huang’s comments came as the truce between the U.S. and China over tariffs and semiconductors continues to be delicate.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry responded to the Trump administration’s recent chip policy change on Monday, calling the U.S. policy “overreaching” and “bullying,” and demanding the White House “correct its mistakes.”
“The U.S. abuses export control measures, imposing unjustified restrictions on Chinese chip products and even interfering with Chinese companies’ use of domestically produced chips within China,” the ministry said.
The White House scrapped the tiered “AI Diffusion Rule” rolled out by former President Joe Biden in January and promised to fully replace it in the future.
Nvidia is stuck in the middle, with Huang maintaining relationships with both sides in a deepening tech cold war.
In Saudi Arabia last week, President Donald Trump called Huang a “friend” and touted Nvidia’s massive AI investment.
Huang accompanied Trump on the Middle East trip, a prominent representative of the U.S.’ global technology power. But Huang has also kept close ties to China and praised the country’s tech capabilities.
Nvidia is acquiring a new space for its employees in Shanghai, though the company said it is not sending any intellectual property or graphics processing unit designs there.
Huang told lawmakers in Washington in April that China is quickly gaining ground on the U.S. in AI.
“China is right behind us,” Huang said. “We are very close. Remember this is a long-term, infinite race.”
He also singled out the capabilities of Huawei, which is reportedly developing its own advanced chip to rival Nvidia.
“They’re incredible in computing and network technology, all these essential capabilities to advance AI,” Huang said. “They have made enormous progress in the last several years.”
Even with the U.S. and China relationship on rocky footing, Huang told senior Chinese officials in April that his company would “unswervingly serve the Chinese market.”
Nvidia’s balancing game continues, reshaping chips to stay compliant and straddling commercial and political fault lines.
Huang’s warning is clear: if the U.S. doesn’t rethink its approach, it could lose the Chinese market and its edge in the global AI race.
The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.
Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.
Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.
But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.
“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.
AI has made it all practical.
“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”
Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.
“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”
Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.
Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.
But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway