“Most people who design hardware, most people who designed networking equipment and microchips, feel the same way as Jensen,” Witt said. “They tend to have a very low sense of risk around this technology. They just don’t see it.”
He said this debate has been going on between the two sides for the past 10 years and “neither side has budged at all.” With Huang growing closer to Trump, it seems likely that the president will continue to downplay warnings from major AI companies and avoid serious talks with China about the risks of their models. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed ahead of Trump’s talks with Xi that “the president is fully aligned with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.”
Nvidia minimizes risks
According to The Information, China’s lifting of restrictions on Nvidia gaming chip exports would “give Nvidia perhaps its best chance in more than a year to regain some momentum in China’s AI market.” If China gives the go-ahead, ByteDance plans to order 1 million chips, which would automatically secure Nvidia two-quarters of projected sales.
That would certainly help improve Nvidia’s financial prospects in China, as the delay in China’s approval of H200 sales meant sales were dismal, making up less than 1 percent of Nvidia’s data center revenue in the most recent quarter.
Andrew Yoon, a researcher at an AI safety nonprofit called CivAI, told CNBC that in the AI industry, “Nvidia is the most aggressive in terms of just making money.”
“At all times, they’re really trying to make sure that whatever happens is good for Nvidia’s bottom line,” Yoon said.
If the United States and China continue to loosen controls, some experts fear that too many chips could end up being diverted to China. Over time, that could cause US data centers to lose a valuable domestic supply of chips that currently makes it possible to stay on the cutting edge of AI, the thinking goes.
