Jensen Huang, Nvidia chief executive officer (CEO), said there are "no ongoing discussions" on exporting the company's latest artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor "Blackwell" to China.
According to Reuters and Bloomberg on the 7th, Huang, who visited Tainan, Taiwan, to meet with semiconductor foundry manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), told reporters upon arrival that this was the case.
He said, "We currently have no plans to ship products to China," adding, "When Nvidia products reenter the Chinese market depends on China's decision." He added, "We hope China will change its policy."
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and others recently, Huang reportedly lobbied U.S. President Donald Trump to allow semiconductor exports to China up until just before the U.S.-China summit on the 30th of last month. Huang has long emphasized the importance of the Chinese market, saying "about half of the world's AI researchers are in China."
Regarding his recent remark that "China will beat the United States in the AI race," Huang said, "That's not what I meant," explaining, "What I said was that China has very advanced AI technology and many AI researchers."
He noted that 50% of the world's AI researchers are in China and that the most popular open-source AI models also come from China, stressing that "because China is moving very fast, the United States must continue to move unbelievably fast."
Huang said at the developers conference (GTC) held in Washington, D.C., in the United States at the end of last month that AI chip sales in China had fallen to "0."
The Trump administration in April this year banned exports of Nvidia's lower-spec semiconductor for China, the "H20." Three months later, the measure was lifted, but China subsequently raised security-related concerns and banned imports of the chip. In response, Nvidia prepared the "B30," a China-bound semiconductor with reduced Blackwell performance, but the Trump administration also rejected that.
Asked what he thought about Tesla CEO Elon Musk planning to build a semiconductor fab (factory), Huang said that while it is "a very important technology and demand is extremely high," building leading-edge semiconductor production capabilities like TSMC's is exceedingly difficult.