Nvidia CEO Jensen Fan on Wednesday said the US is “not far ahead” in the AI competition and said it would require a “subtle strategy” to keep the country’s higher position.
Huang has been on a tense line between the two countries and has praised China’s AI models, including Deep Sheek. Alibabaand Hyakudo. While the US model is still more advanced, China’s open source model is “a lot more advanced,” Huang said.
In July, the CEO expressed favorability to China on several business trips following US chip restrictions, warning that companies like Huawei should not discount Chinese chip systems.
President Donald Trump had a telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September and announced plans to meet at the APEC South Korean summit at the end of October.
Here are five important things that Fan talked about AI competition on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“China is far ahead of us in the energy sector. We are far ahead in the chip sector. China is right there in the infrastructure sector. China is right there in the AI model sector too.”
Nvidia, widely known as a leading AI chip manufacturer, announced in September it plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to build AI data centers. However, these massive investments in computing power require a large amount of energy, with China far surpassing the US in its production volume.
According to the Energy Association, China generated a total of 10,000 terawatt-hours (1 trillion watt-hours) of electricity in 2024, more than twice the US.
“Remember, this country isn’t without chips. They have Huawei. They have a really sophisticated, truly entrepreneurial startup that develops AI chips.”
The US may be leading the way in advanced chip designs such as NVIDIA’s Blackwell processors, but Chinese tech giant Huawei is increasing pressure by planning to launch a new computing system that powers its in-house ascend chips next year.
China reportedly bans technology companies from using Nvidia chips and instead focuses on advances in domestic chips to counter Nvidia processors. Alibaba and Baidu reportedly began using chips designed in-house to train AI models.
“Applications in China are progressing at an incredible speed. This is an area that I am extremely concerned about.”
Huang said that China is “introducing new technologies quickly” because of insufficient regulations at the industrial level.
According to an order from the China State Council, the country aims to achieve AI adoption in 70% of its population by 2027 by introducing a variety of agents and other applications across its core industries.
“We hope that American companies in American society will quickly adopt AI applications because this industrial revolution will ultimately win in the AI application layer and the spreading layer,” Juan said.
“The Chinese market is big. China has 1 billion users. So if the ultimate goal is for the US to win the AI competition, it’s not a market where it can easily decide to withdraw.”
China holds 50% of the world’s AI researchers and 30% of the technology market, Huang said.
The country’s stocks are showing strong growth amid growing chip advances and confidence in AI development. The Chinese market has been booming as stock prices of high-tech companies have risen more than three digits over the past year.
Alibaba stocks have risen almost 180% since the start of the year, while the stock price of home appliance giant Xiaomi rose 125%.
“We essentially segregate American technology within the US, confiscating the rest of the world to other countries to compete.”
Fan pointed out that he is developing a US technology stack to capture global AI developers and markets, warning that if US technology is not allowed to “spread and spread around the world,” the US will be in the middle of a lag.
The CEO mentioned White House AI advisor David Sachs’ comments on the technology situation five years from now.
“If the US, the tech stack in the US, accounts for 80% of the world, we’re winning the AI competition well. If the US accounts for 20% of the world, we’re losing to the AI competition,” Juan said.
Huang also mentioned companies like Azure. Core WeaveAnd Anthropic AI plays an important role in revolutionizing the entire technology stack.
