NVIDIA says Huawei AI GPU demand will skyrocket if US export restrictions continue to tighten

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang seems concerned over Huawei growing out of control, warns of creating a global market for Huawei AI chips in the future.

NVIDIA says Huawei AI GPU demand will skyrocket if US export restrictions continue to tighten
Comment IconFacebook IconX IconReddit Icon
Gaming Editor
Published
2 minutes & 15 seconds read time

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.

TL;DR: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang warns of rising competition from Huawei’s AI chips amid escalating US-China AI tensions. He urges easing export restrictions on NVIDIA GPUs, highlighting Huawei’s growing AI cluster deployments in China. Despite Huawei’s advances, NVIDIA’s future Blackwell GPUs are expected to maintain technological leadership.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang remains concerned over Chinese tech giant Huawei, warning that we could see a future where Huawei AI chips would fight in the global market against NVIDIA AI chips.

NVIDIA says Huawei AI GPU demand will skyrocket if US export restrictions continue to tighten 22
2

Jensen has urged US lawmakers to "ease off" pressure on NVIDIA AI GPU exports, saying that the US and China are in an "AI war" where there's a rather fast race for AI models and cutting-edge hardware capabilities. The US government has been tightening restrictions on AI GPUs, but Huawei has been working around this and capitalizing on it by ramping up AI chips and even AI clusters in China.

These issues were raised during a closed-door meeting between NVIDIA executives and the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, where a senior staff source said: "If DeepSeek R1 had been trained on (Huawei chips) or a future open-source Chinese model had been trained to be highly optimized to Huawei chips, that would risk creating a global market demand for Huawei chips".

NVIDIA spokesperson John Rizzo said in a statement: "Jensen met with the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss the strategic importance of AI as national infrastructure and the need to invest in U.S. manufacturing. He reaffirmed NVIDIA's full support for the government's efforts to promote American technology and interests around the world".

Huawei has been delivering CloudMatrix 384 AI clusters in China, powered by its Ascend 910C AI chip, while its next-gen Ascend 910D is coming... but it'll only compete against NVIDIA's previous-gen Hopper H100 AI GPU and not come close to Blackwell, let alone Rubin in 2026.

But, the US government's tightening grip on AI GPU exports has been hurting NVIDIA -- a $5.5 billion hit for the H20 being banned recently in China -- which would've kick-started some serious discussions like this between NVIDIA and the Trump administration.