NVIDIA’s CEO has apparently taken a dig at industry rumors that say the firm’s chips are being used in China, and claims that there’s no evidence to back such rumors.
NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Claims That Limiting American Technology Is “Precisely Wrong”, Saying It Should Be Everywhere Including China
There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding NVIDIA and its business in China, given that the US believes that Team Green’s high-end AI chips are ending up in hostile nations, threatening national security. The US has been catering to this issue by implementing strict regulations, which have hindered NVIDIA’s business in China tremendously, but CEO Jensen Huang believes that there’s no sign of chip diversion to China, saying that the hardware is too difficult to smuggle across such nations.
There’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion. These are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons, and so you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon.
The important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed and everybody would like to continue to buy Nvidia technology.
– NVIDIA’s CEO via Bloomberg
Well, chip diversion doesn’t only include Grace Blackwell AI clusters being moved to China, it also takes into account AI hardware like H100 AI accelerators, which are said to be readily available in the region, despite US restrictions. So, Jensen’s claim of NVIDIA’s chips not being in China isn’t entirely true, but we still are not to the point where rack-scale architecture is being smuggled to the region, such as the GB300 systems. Team Green doesn’t look happy with the constant US regulations, which are said to have significantly impacted the company’s influence in China.
One of the primary sources through which China has been accessing NVIDIA’s AI chips is by leveraging trade loopholes and importing from nations such as Singapore, which isn’t “legally” wrong. NVIDIA’s CEO might not have considered this when discussing the chip diversion. However, it won’t be wrong to say NVIDIA won’t have an easy time doing business with China anymore, since with new US regulations, the company’s options for the domestic market have become limited, so in-house alternatives from Huawei have become a better choice.
However, while NVIDIA has seen a compromise from China, the firm is eventually moving away from Big Tech and is now supplying hardware to governments, notably the Middle East. In the past few weeks, NVIDIA has grabbed orders for “millions of accelerators” and plans to build large-scale AI datacenters in countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
