Nvidia's CEO says attempts to control chip exports to China are a failure: 'If they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own.'

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"AI researchers are still doing AI research in China," say Jensen Huang.

Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang on stage during the GTC 2025 keynote
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Attempts by the US government to put a cap on China's development of AI technologies by limiting exports of GPUs has been a "failure". So says no less an authority on the subject than Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang.

The New York Times quotes Huang at the ongoing Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan denouncing GPU export controls. "AI researchers are still doing AI research in China," Huang said on Wednesday. "If they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own," he said. All of which means, "the export control was a failure."

Computex 2025

The Taipei 101 building and Taipei skyline in Taiwan.

(Image credit: Jacob Ridley)

Catch up with Computex 2025: We're on the ground at Taiwan's biggest tech show to see what Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and more have to show.

Meanwhile, it's a little difficult to gauge Jensen Huang's strategy and loyalties in all this. He recently appeared with other business leaders as a guest of the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia. But Nvidia has also just unveiled what will be a new Global headquarters in Taiwan, which doesn't entirely square with the broader push to reshore tech manufacturing to the US.

Likewise, the New York Times reports that, "the day after the US government opened an investigation into whether Nvidia's previous sales to China had violated its rules, Mr. Huang met with top economic and trade officials in Beijing."

The plot, as they say, thickens. At the very least, it seems Huang and Nvidia are keeping their options fully open.

Jeremy Laird
Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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