China, US 'very, very close' in the chip race, says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

China has made significant investment in resources to shore up its semiconductor sector amid the recent export restrictions by the US and its allies

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated Wednesday that China is ‘not behind’ in artificial intelligence and that Huawei is “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world”. When speaking to reporters at a technology conference in Washington DC, Huang said the gap between China and the US is minimal.

Huawei, currently on a US trade blacklist, is reportedly developing its own AI chip for the Chinese market. Huang said the company has made “enormous progress in the last several years”.

 

This month, the Trump administration implemented restrictions on shipping Nvidia’s H20 chips to China without proper licensing. This technology, which relates to the Hopper chips utilised elsewhere globally, was designed to meet previous US export constraints. Nvidia announced it would incur a $5.5 billion loss due to this restriction.

 

Nvidia is the world’s leading maker of GPUs, which are in high demand because they can be used to speed up artificial intelligence work.  However, the company is facing obstacles in the US, including tariffs and a pending Biden-era regulation that would limit the export of its most advanced AI chips to numerous countries globally.

 

Nvidia has argued that restricting chip sales to China and other countries threatens US technology leadership.

 

EU lags US, China in AI investments: Huang 

Last year, Huang had said that the European Union lags far behind the United States and China in investing in artificial intelligence. “The EU has to accelerate the progress in AI,” Huang said during a visit to Copenhagen. “There's an awakening in every country realising that the data is a national resource.”

 

Huang has indicated China’s ability to catch up in chip technology on many occasions. China has invested massive resources into shoring up the sector amid export restrictions by the US and its allies.

 

Chinese AI scientists threaten US tech dominance? 

According to the Hoover Institution, an American think tank, China’s home-grown artificial intelligence talent may be a threat to the United States’ tech dominance.

 

A report by the think tank stated that China has developed a strong internal pipeline for AI talent, as seen in DeepSeek’s research team, majority of whose members received their education and training within China itself. Although approximately 25 per cent of DeepSeek researchers gained professional experience in the United States, the majority returned to China. This led to a one-way transfer of knowledge that enhanced China’s AI ecosystem, according to the findings.