Lawmakers in Washington have worked for years to limit China’s access to the cutting-edge computer chips needed for advanced artificial intelligence, particularly those made by Nvidia, America’s leading chipmaker.
But according to Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, those regulations, driven by economic and security concerns, have only made Chinese tech companies stronger.
The export controls on chips forced Nvidia to forfeit its dominant position in China while domestic companies like Huawei, the telecommunications giant, filled the gap, Mr. Huang said at a news conference in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, on Wednesday.
Washington’s efforts gave Chinese companies “the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” said Mr. Huang, who attended a tech conference in Taipei this week. “All in all, the export control was a failure.”
Beginning in 2022, under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the U.S. government imposed rules to curb the export of Nvidia’s most powerful chips to China. Nvidia responded by modifying one type of chip, making it less powerful so it would fall below the government’s performance thresholds. Last month, Nvidia disclosed that U.S. officials were requiring a license for future sales of those chips to China, forcing the company to take a $5.5 billion hit on inventory it had already planned to sell.
Although Huawei’s chips cannot do everything that Nvidia’s can, they work well enough to help Chinese companies provide A.I. services to people and businesses. In recent months, the government in Beijing has been pushing companies to stock their data centers with mostly Chinese-made chips.
“A.I. researchers are still doing A.I. research in China,” Mr. Huang said on Wednesday. “If they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own,” he said.
Mr. Huang has vowed that Nvidia will do everything it can to keep selling A.I. chips in China. The day after the U.S. government opened an investigation into whether Nvidia’s previous sales to China had violated its rules, Mr. Huang met with top economic and trade officials in Beijing.
Nvidia says it is concerned that any advantage gained by Huawei in China could eventually spread into other markets, helping Huawei build a stronger foundation from which to compete around the world.
Washington’s controls on chip exports have made it increasingly difficult for Nvidia to do business in China. The country accounted for $17 billion of Nvidia’s revenue during its last fiscal year, by percentage the least in over a decade, according to Bernstein Research. Nvidia reported $130 billion in global revenue during its last fiscal year, an increase of 114 percent over the year before.
“Four years ago, at the beginning of the Biden administration, Nvidia’s market share in China was nearly 95 percent,” Mr. Huang said. “Today it is only 50 percent.”
This month, the U.S. Commerce Department said that any person or company using Huawei A.I. chips could be in violation of U.S. export controls.
Countries around the world have been lining up to buy Nvidia chips, and the Trump administration has positioned itself as a deal broker.
Mr. Huang was in the Gulf region last week during President Trump’s visit there, as the administration struck multibillion-dollar agreements to sell advanced chips from Nvidia to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Officials in the administration believe these deals will boost business for American A.I. companies like Nvidia and widen the nation’s lead in artificial intelligence. Mr. Huang criticized the approach taken by the Biden administration.
“President Trump said very publicly he would like Nvidia to sell as many GPUs as possible all around the world,” Mr. Huang said, referring to an Nvidia product needed for A.I. systems.
He said it was important that China’s artificial intelligence developers work on systems made by Nvidia, “or at least on American technology.”
Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China and is based in Taipei.
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