NVIDIA NOT STEPPING BACK FROM CHINA
A Reuters report earlier this month said that the US has cleared about 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far.
According to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, the US Commerce Department has approved about 10 Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 chips.
A handful of distributors, including Lenovo and Foxconn, have also been approved, they said.
Asked if China could eventually become Nvidia’s greatest rival, Mr Huang said that China is going to be “everybody’s greatest rival”.
“They have such an extraordinary, local market that is completely uniform,” said Mr Huang, who was part of a group of executives who joined US President Donald Trump on a visit to China earlier this month.
“Just like the United States – every single state speaks English. China, every province speaks Chinese. And that’s a substantial advantage versus Europe, where every single country speaks a different language or countries, where everybody speaks the same language, but the market’s not very big.
“And so these two countries, the United States and China, have a substantial advantage because of that reason.”
He added that China’s pace of innovation and natural resources, including its people and culture, will “almost certainly guarantee” it will compete with every industry.
Mr Huang said that Nvidia is not stepping back from China.
“When we were banned from going to China through export controls, it left a vacuum that the Chinese companies were able to fill. And as a result, Huawei and many of the start-up companies in China had record years,” he said.
“Even though Nvidia’s technology is better, in our absence, available technology is the best you can get, and it’s plenty good.”
It is understandable that the Chinese authorities encourage and want to have conditions for their local companies to thrive, but Mr Huang added that Nvidia could add an “enormous amount of value” to the Chinese market.