Nvidia’s Huang doesn’t buy the national security concerns over selling chips to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t buy the national security concerns over his firm selling its most advanced semiconductors to China, claiming collaboration is in everyone’s best interest.

Speaking to reporters in South Korea, Huang said he will keep campaigning for access to the Chinese market and is “optimistic” the country will continue to want U.S. chips as it positions itself as an AI leader.

“The way to think about the China market is, it’s a singular, vital, important, dynamic market, and nobody can replace that,” he said.

“It’s in the best interest of America to serve that China market. It’s in the best interest of China to have the American technology company bring … technology to the China market … It’s in the best interest of both countries, and I hope that policymakers will ultimately come to that conclusion.”

His comments come amid U.S. export curbs that restrict Chinese firms from buying advanced semiconductors used in the development of AI.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he had discussed the export of Nvidia chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the leaders met, but the discussions did not cover the most advanced Blackwell graphics processing units. “I said that’s really between [China] and Nvidia, but we’re sort of the arbitrator,” Trump said after the meeting.

When asked by CNBC’s Eunice Yoon whether he would like Blackwell GPUs to be sold in China, Huang said: “I hope so. I hope so. But that’s a decision for President Trump to make.”

The U.S. says its chip curbs are designed to restrict both China’s “access to the technologies and ability to produce advanced chips” and curtail its access to “related computing and AI applications.”

But Huang indicated these concerns are misplaced.

“China makes plenty of AI chips themselves, and the Chinese military surely have plenty of access to chips that are created in China. So, whatever national security concerns, have to take into consideration the fact that China has blocked H20 [an Nvidia chip] and, so, in a lot of ways, China is saying that, ‘listen, we have plenty of AI technology ourselves’,” Huang told CNBC’s Yoon on Friday.

“And so the national security concern, from that perspective, I think, is really answered by the fact that China doesn’t want H20 or any American chips.”

Huang’s eagerness to have full access to the China market is perhaps unsurprising, given the size of the potential market. The Nvidia CEO on Friday described the market opportunity in China as “probably $50 billion this year. It’s probably, call it, a couple of 100 billion dollars by the end of the decade.”

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is also at the center of tech tensions between the U.S. and China.

The federal use of Huawei products is banned in the U.S. over fears they could be used for spying by the Chinese government, while U.S. firms are also restricted from doing business with the firm. The bans came into force under Trump’s first term.

Huang said Nvidia is “miles ahead” in the chips race, but stressed, “it is foolish to underestimate the might of China and the incredible, competitive spirit of Huawei.”

“This is a company with extraordinary technology. They dominate the world’s 5G telecommunication standards and technology. They build amazing smartphones, they build amazing chips, they’re incredible at networking and so when they announced CloudMatrix, I was not surprised that they were able to create such an amazing thing,” Huang said, referring to Huawei’s large-scale AI supercomputing system.

“It’s deeply uninformed to think that Huawei can’t build systems. We take competition very seriously. We respect the competition, we respect deeply the capabilities of China. That’s why we run so fast, and that’s why we dedicate ourselves to inventing the future so we can get there before anybody else,” he added.

— CNBC’s Eunice Yoon, Spencer Kimball and Arjun Kharpal contributed to reporting.