Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is back with another ‘China warning’ for the United States of America. In a recent appearance on Dwarkesh Podcast, Huang once again said that working with China then ‘against China’ is in the interests of the US. He said that 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 said, “We have got to acknowledge that most of the advances in AI came out of algorithm advances, not just the raw hardware. Now, if most advances came from algorithms and computer science and programming, tell me that their army of AI researchers is not their fundamental advantage. We see it. DeepSeek is not an inconsequential advance. The day that DeepSeek comes out on Huawei first, that is a horrible outcome for our nation.“When asked about how DeepSeek’s being an open source model can hurt America’s proprietary systems, considering that it can run on any system. Huang explained, “Suppose it doesn’t. Suppose it’s optimized for Huawei, suppose it’s optimized for their architecture. It would put ours at a disadvantage. You described a situation that I perceive to be good news. A company developed software, developed an AI model, and it runs best on the American tech stack. I saw that as good news. You set it up as a premise that it was bad news. I’m going to give you the bad news, that AI models around the world are developed and they run best on non-American hardware. That is bad news for us.” When asked how shipping chips to China is keeping the US ahead, considering that the bottleneck is on compute. To this Huang replied, “Nvidia. You consider Nvidia a United States company? Okay. Number one, why is it that we don’t come up with a regulation that’s more balanced so that Nvidia can win around the world instead of giving up the world? Why would you want the United States to give up the world? The chip industry is part of the American ecosystem. It’s part of American technology leadership. It’s part of the AI ecosystem. It’s part of AI leadership. Why is it that your policy, your philosophy, leads to the United States giving up a vast part of the world’s market?”
“United States is not a loser”
Nvidia CEO sounded a bit upset when stressed on how America giving permission to Nvidia to sell its chips in China helps in the country’s AI dominance. Huang replied after constant prodding, “We have to keep innovating and, as you probably know, our share is growing, not decreasing. The premise that even if we compete in China, that we’re going to lose that market anyways… You’re not talking to somebody who woke up a loser. That loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me.We’re not a car. We are not a car. The fact that I can buy this car brand one day and use another car brand another day, easy. 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.Conceding a marketplace based on the premise you described, I simply can’t acknowledge that. It makes no sense. Because I don’t think the United States is a loser. Our industry is not a loser. That losing proposition, that losing mindset, makes no sense to me.”