Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says China’s military unlikely to use US AI chips

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said the US government doesn’t need to be concerned that the Chinese military will use his company’s products to improve their capabilities.

Addressing the largest concern Washington has cited in placing increasing restrictions on US technology exports to the Asian nation, Huang said the Chinese military will avoid using US technology because of the risks associated with doing so.

“We don’t have to worry about it,” he said in an interview on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS broadcast Sunday.

“They simply can’t rely on it,” he added. “It could be, of course, limited at any time.”

Huang and his peers have lost out on billions of dollars of revenue under increasingly tough rules designed to shut off China from access to the most powerful artificial intelligence capabilities. Successive administrations in Washington have maintained that unfettered use of the most capable components would pose a risk to national security.

Nvidia’s CEO, who was in Washington last week before a trip to Beijing, has argued that the strategy will fail because it will spur growth of domestic capabilities in China that will eventually rival those created by the US technology industry. Nvidia and its peers say US companies should be allowed to ship to the world’s largest market for semiconductors to keep their products central to the development of AI.

Huang met with President Donald Trump last week to make his case again and has praised the administration’s push to increase domestic production of semiconductors. Nvidia and others are dependent on the manufacturing facilities of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the majority of which are located on its home island, just off the Chinese mainland.

Trump touted the success of Nvidia and its growth to become the first US company to reach a $4 trillion market capitalization. Details of a White House meeting between the two weren’t made public but so far the administration and politicians on both sides have remained firm on not allowing more access for Chinese companies.