Huang Renxun: "If the US does not export AI chips to China, Chinese companies will fill the gap!"

On June 16, South Korean media "Asia Economics" published an article stating that NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun warned that if US companies cannot export competitive AI chips to the Chinese market, Chinese companies will fill this gap.

Recently, Huang Renxun told Bloomberg TV in an interview that "China is very important regardless of short-term sales."

He said: "China is the world's second-largest AI market and also the place with the most AI researchers. We hope all AI researchers and developers around the world will develop based on American platforms."

NVIDIA has been selling performance-reduced H20 chips to the Chinese market to comply with US semiconductor export regulations for China. However, the Trump administration has restricted exports of H20 chips to China since last month. Subsequently, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese company Huawei is developing its own high-performance chips that can rival NVIDIA's H100.

Huang Renxun said he is considering whether to launch chips with lower performance than H20 to the Chinese market. He said: "H20 limits the Hopper architecture to the lowest level, and it is currently unclear how to further reduce performance." He continued, "Chinese competitors have made tremendous progress over the past year, with capacity growing two to four times annually. Without US technology, Chinese technology will fill the market. Therefore, whatever we provide must at least be competitive."

When asked by the host if Huawei had products similar in performance to H20, Huang Renxun replied: "Possibly similar to H200. Huawei is quite powerful."

In previous conference calls, Huang Renxun did not hesitate to directly criticize the Trump administration's semiconductor export regulatory policies. He stated that even without American-made AI chips, China's AI is still developing, emphasizing that "regulation is a factor that further strengthens China's semiconductor companies." He also pointed out that "America's leadership is precarious, and America's policies are based on the assumption that China cannot independently develop AI, which is clearly wrong."

NVIDIA CFO Chris Klepeis said, "The bigger issue is that NVIDIA cannot access a constantly expanding market. The Chinese market size will grow to $50 billion, but we lost the opportunity for $50 billion. I believe new semiconductor export regulations will have a practical impact on NVIDIA and help overseas competitors."

Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1835050650335435/

Disclaimer: This article only represents the author's personal views.