LONDON — The CEO of Nvidia, which faces tight restrictions on selling its chips to China amid the U.S.-China battle over trade and tech, said he’s disappointed about the situation.
Jensen Huang said he expects to discuss the issue with President Donald Trump at a state banquet hosted by the British government that they’ll be attending on Wednesday night.
Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, is restricted from exporting its most advanced chips, which are in demand for developing artificial intelligence, to China. This week, Beijing regulators also targeted the company, accusing it of antitrust breaches stemming from a 2020 acquisition of an Israeli tech company.
Adding to the problems, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that China’s internet regulator is banning domestic tech companies from buying an Nvidia chip model tailored for the local market.
Asked about the report at a media briefing in London, Jensen Huang said he didn’t have a reaction, but added, “I think that we could only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be.”
China is the world’s second biggest AI computing market and Nvidia has contributed more than most companies, he said.
“I’m disappointed with what I see, but they have larger agendas to work out, you know, between China and the United States, and I’m understanding of that, and we’re patient about it,” he said.
Huang said the company will continue to be “supportive” of both governments as they “sort through these geopolitical policies”, adding there’s “not very much anxiety there.”
Huang said he hasn’t yet spoken to Trump about the latest developments, “but I’ll see him tonight, and he’ll probably ask me. I’ll probably say something similar.”
The CEO is visiting London at same time as Trump to unveil a flurry of new investments that coincide with the president’s visit, including a deal to supply tens of thousands of its processor chips for data centers that will be part of the U.K. arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI.