Nvidia CEO Praises Trump's Steps To Relax AI Chip Export Rules To China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised the Donald Trump administration's decision (photo; x @bulicama)

JAKARTA - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised the Donald Trump administration's decision to relax export restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China. He also called the export rules previously applied as "failments" that have cost US companies billions of dollars.

The comments were directed at Joe Biden's government policy known as the AI diffusion rule, which divides the world into three export levels, with China barred from accepting state-of-the-art AI chips completely. The Trump administration said it would change the rules.

"Overall, export controls are a failure," Huang said at a press conference at Computex, Taipei, Wednesday, May 21. "The basic assumptions underlying the policy proved very wrong."

China Market Shrinks Sharply

Since the beginning of Biden's administration, Nvidia's market share in China has fallen from 95% to just 50%. Huang said the ban on the sale of advanced AI chips forced Chinese companies to switch to local design chips such as Huawei. It also triggers massive investments from China to build independent semiconductor supply chains.

Despite being hampered by export restrictions, Huang revealed that AI research is still running and requires very expensive infrastructure. He added that Trump showed a better understanding of the global AI chip market.

"President Trump realized that the purpose of the previous policy was in the wrong direction," Huang said, quoted by VOI from Reuters.

AI Competition In China Is Very Tight

Huang also emphasized that competition in China is getting tighter. More than half of the world's AI researchers are based in China, and they are now using local technology due to US export policies.

"Our competition in China is very intense. They would be happy if we never returned there," Huang said.

He estimates that the AI market in China could reach a value of around 50 billion US dollars (equivalent to Rp817 trillion) next year a very big opportunity for Nvidia.

Nvidia announced that it would record a loss of 5.5 billion US dollars due to restrictions on exports of the AI chip H20 to China. Huang even estimated the impact of the total loss from H20 could reach 15 billion US dollars.

In response, Nvidia is currently developing a version of Blackwell's generation AI chip with reduced memory speed to match US government export restrictions, according to two internal sources.

China has strongly condemned the actions of the US deemed discriminatory, especially warnings for companies not to use Chinese-made AI chips such as Huawei Ascend. China's Ministry of Trade accuses the US of violating bilateral trade deals and vowed to take firm action if its national interests continue to be harmed.