Nvidia CEO warns ‘China is going to win the AI race’: report

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is warning that China will overtake America in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race.

The chipmaker’s chief executive said the West is limiting its own progress in AI through excessive “cynicism,” while pointing to China’s lower energy costs and fewer regulatory hurdles as advantages, he told the Financial Times on Wednesday on the sidelines of the newspaper’s Future of AI Summit.

“China is going to win the AI race,” Huang said.

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Huang also criticized new AI rules by states across the U.S. that could lead to greater regulations. He compared this to China’s energy subsidies, which lower costs for companies using Chinese AI chips, according to the Financial Times.

In a statement posted to X on Wednesday, Huang added that “China is nanoseconds behind America in AI.”

“It’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide,” Huang said.

The chief executive has previously cautioned that U.S. AI models are not far ahead of China’s and has called for broader access to Nvidia chips globally, the Financial Times reported.

His comments Wednesday follow after President Donald Trump recently maintained a ban on Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips being sold to China, according to the Financial Times.

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In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said Nvidia’s most powerful Blackwell chips should be reserved exclusively for U.S. customers, according to Reuters.

“The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” Trump told CBS.

Last week, Nvidia also became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market valuation.