White House AI czar says China is only 3-6 months behind the US in AI, not years behind

White House AI and crypto czar says China is only 3-6 months behind the US on AI, not years behind America, and that it's a 'very close race'.

Anthony Garreffa

Gaming Editor

Published Jun 10, 2025 11:33 PM CDT

3-minute read time

TL;DR: White House AI czar David Sacks states China is only 3-6 months behind the US in AI development, emphasizing a close race. He warns that strict US AI regulations could hinder growth and cede market leadership to China, despite challenges in Chinese AI chip production and semiconductor manufacturing.

White House AI czar David Sacks has said that China isn't years behind the US when it comes to AI, but more like 3-6 months behind, and that the AI race is "very close".

Sacks was speaking at the AWS Summit in Washington when the White House AI and crypto czar said: "China is not years and years behind us in AI. Maybe they're three to six months. It's a very close race". He also downplayed the issues of American AI chips being smuggled by bad actors, and raised concerns that regulating US AI too tightly could hurt growth, and cede the critical AI market to China.

He said: "We talk about these chips like they could be smuggled in the back of a briefcase. That's not what they look like. These are server racks that are eight feet tall and weigh two tons. They don't walk out doors. It's very easy to basically verify that they're where they're supposed to be".

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Read more: China is at least 10 years behind Taiwan in advanced semiconductor manufacturing

We've seen President Trump and NVIDIA make agreements with other countries to use its AI GPUs in servers, with partnerships with the likes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia for new AI supercomputers and bleeding-edge AI chips. NVIDIA has been tweaking -- it seems 24/7 -- its AI GPUs, with its new Blackwell-based B40 expected to launch in the months ahead. B40 is said to move away from advanced packaging and HBM, and will use GDDR7 memory instead.

However, on the AI czar and his comments regarding China only being 3-6 months behind in AI... well, when it comes to hardware we have China's Huawei which is the country's direct (and only) competitor (close) to NVIDIA.

Read more: Huawei's new Ascend 910C AI GPUs have major issues: overheating, chips stop functioning

But in recent rumors, we've heard that Huawei's new Ascend 910C AI chip mass production has been delayed, as the AI chips have been reportedly overheating and just stop functioning altogether.

If Huawei can't get AI chips out... and just working... then those 3-6 months behind turn into many years before the Chinese company can get any foothold in the market. Secondly, it's not just the AI chip but semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC is world-class, SMIC (based in China) is not. Thirdly, it's not just AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing, but also the ecosystem surrounding AI -- NVIDIA has spent a considerable amount of time building CUDA and so have millions of developers across the planet (including in China).