NVIDIA CEO turns to China after US bars chip sales

[Chrishaune]

Billionaires scheming to dominate the general public and forever pigeon hole you into a life of lower class with no say.

 

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Nvidia's research boss claims the company's Chinese AI researchers are now writing programs for Huawei instead and is blaming the US chip exports

But is Nvidia really worried?

www.pcgamer.com

Nvidia's research boss claims the company's Chinese AI researchers are now writing programs for Huawei instead and is blaming the US chip exports​

ByJacob Fox published2 days ago

But is Nvidia really worried?

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(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's been banging the drum against the United State's China chip export restrictions for a while now, but while it had previously highlighted this in broad terms, the company now seems to be getting more direct with its claims. According to a machine translation of a report from Taiwan Economic Daily (via Wccftech), Nvidia's chief scientist and senior VP of research, Bill Dally, claims that Huawei is scooping up ex-Nvidia AI researchers as a result of the restrictions.

According to Dally, admittedly via a machine translation, the growth in the number of AI researchers working in China—apparently growing from a third of the world's researchers in 2019 to almost half of them today—has been forced by the US export restrictions. The idea is that without these restrictions, Huawei wouldn't be forced to lean so strongly into home-grown AI solutions, but now it must do so to keep up.

Nvidia is clearly keen on presenting this argument (probably in hopes that the US administration specifically will hear it) to show that there are arguable downsides of banning its exports to China for the US. It certainly appeals to the ears of those concerned about the US-China technological arms race.

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As I said, though, the general argument isn't new—Nvidia has been touting it for a while. At Computex last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: "AI researchers are still doing AI research in China" and "if they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own [chips]." And regarding Huawei specifically, Huang said the company has become "quite formidable".

There is, of course, another reason other than US national interest that might make Nvidia keen to highlight possible negatives of export controls. Namely, the fact that these restrictions have cost and will cost the company lots of money.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia itself has confirmed this, stating that after billions of dollars lost through restrictions of its H20 chips to China in Q1, it's expecting another $8 billion to be lost for the same reason in Q2. That's because Hopper, the company's previous chip architecture, "is no longer an option", according to the CEO.

Huawei's latest Ascend 910 and 920 chips, courtesy of China's SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), will probably now be better options for Chinese AI companies than trying to get hands on Nvidia silicon somehow.

And with ex-Nvidia researchers now apparently padding out the Chinese industry, who knows what will be cooked up next and when. Nvidia certainly seems to be presenting itself as worried about what's to come.

The company can't complain about the vaguely 'poachy' aspect of this, though, really—not when Nvidia seems to be enticing likely TSMC employees in Taiwan with high salary job advertisements. Sometimes business is just business, you know?

 

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A timeline of the US semiconductor market in 2025 | TechCrunch

From leadership changes at legacy semiconductor companies to wishy washy policy around chip exports, a lot has happened already.

techcrunch.com

A timeline of the US semiconductor market in 2025​

Rebecca Szkutak

4:06 AM PDT · June 19, 2025


It’s already been a tumultuous year for the U.S. semiconductor industry.

The semiconductor industry plays a sizable role in the “AI race” that the U.S. seems determined to win, which is why this context is worth paying attention to: from Intel’s appointment of Lip-Bu Tan to CEO — who wasted no time getting to work trying to revitalize the legacy company — to Joe Biden proposing sweeping new AI chip export rules on his way out of office that never came to fruition.

Here’s a look at what’s happened in the first half of 2025.

June​

Intel appoints new leadership​

June 18: Intel announced four new leadership appointments that Intel says will help it move toward its goal of becoming an engineering-first company again. Intel announced a new chief revenue officer in addition to multiple high-profile engineering hires.

Intel to begin layoffs​

June 17: Intel will begin to lay off a significant chunk of its Intel Foundry staff in July. The company plans to eliminate at least 15%, and up to 20%, of workers in that business unit. These layoffs aren’t a shock: It was rumored back in April, and Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan has said he wants to flatten the organization.

Nvidia won’t report on China​

June 13: Nvidia isn’t counting on the U.S. backing off of its AI chip export restrictions anytime soon. After the company took a financial hit from the newly imposed licensing requirements on its H20 AI chips, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company will no longer include the Chinese market in future revenue and profit forecasts.

AMD acquires the team behind Untether AI​

June 6: AMD makes another acquisition — this time focused on talent. The company acqui-hired the team behind Untether AI, which develops AI inference chips, as the semiconductor giant continues to round out its AI offerings.

AMD is coming for Nvidia’s AI hardware dominance​

June 4: AMD continued its shopping spree. The company acquired AI software optimization startup Brium, which helps companies retrofit AI software to work with different AI hardware. With a lot of AI software being designed with Nvidia hardware in mind, this acquisition isn’t surprising.

May​

Nvidia lays out the impact of chip export restrictions​

May 28: Nvidia reported that U.S. licensing requirements on its H20 AI chips cost the company $4.5 billion in charges during Q1. The company expects these requirements to result in an $8 billion hit to Nvidia’s revenue in Q2.

AMD acquires Enosemi​

May 28: AMD kicks off its acquisition spree. The semiconductor company announced that it acquired Enosemi, a silicon photonics startup. Enosemi’s tech, which uses light photons to transmit data, is becoming an increasing area of interest for semiconductor companies.

Tensions start to flare between China and the U.S.​

May 21: China’s Commerce Secretary didn’t like the U.S.’s guidance, issued on May 13, that warned U.S. companies that using Huawei’s AI chips “anywhere in the world” was a U.S. chip export violation. The commerce secretary issued a statement that threatened legal action against anyone caught enforcing that export restriction.

Intel may be starting to offload its non-core units​

May 20: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan seemingly got right to work on his plan to spin out Intel’s non-core business units. The semiconductor giant is reportedly looking to offload its networking and edge units, which makes chips for telecom equipment, and was responsible for $5.4 billion of the company’s 2024 revenue.

The Biden administration’s AI Diffusion rule is officially dead​

May 13: Just days before the Biden administration’s Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule was set to go into place, the U.S. Department of Commerce formally rescinded it. The DOC said that it plans to issue new guidance in the future, and in the meantime companies should remember that using Huawei’s Ascend AI chips anywhere in the world is a violation of U.S. export rules.

A last-minute reversal​

May 7: Just a week before the “Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion” was set to go into place, the Trump administration plans on taking a different path. According to multiple media outlets, including Axios and Bloomberg, the administration won’t enforce the restrictions when they were supposed to start on May 15 and is instead working on its own framework.

April​

Anthropic doubles down on its support of chip export restrictions​

April 30: Anthropic doubled down on its support for restricting U.S.-made chip exports, including some tweaks to the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, like imposing further restrictions on Tier 2 countries and dedicating resources to enforcement. An Nvidia spokesperson shot back, saying, “American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters.’”

Planned layoffs at Intel​

April 22: Ahead of its Q1 earnings call, Intel said it was planning to lay off more than 21,000 employees. The layoffs were meant to streamline management, something CEO Lip-Bu Tan has long said Intel needed to do, and help rebuild the company’s engineering focus.

The Trump administration further restricts chip exports​

April 15: Nvidia’s H20 AI chip got hit with an export licensing requirement, the company disclosed in an SEC filing. The company added it expects $5.5 billion in charges related to this new requirement in the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year. The H20 is the most advanced AI chip Nvidia can still export to China in some form or fashion. TSMC and Intel reported similar expenses the same week.

Nvidia appears to talk its way out of further chip exports​

April 9: Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang was spotted attending dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to reports. At the time, NPR reported Huang may have been able to spare Nvidia’s H20 AI chips from export restrictions upon agreeing to invest in AI data centers in the U.S.

An alleged agreement between Intel and TSMC​

April 3: Intel and TSMC allegedly reached a tentative agreement to launch a joint chipmaking venture. This joint venture would operate Intel’s chipmaking facilities, and TSMC would have a 20% stake in the new venture. Both companies declined to comment or confirm. If this deal doesn’t come to fruition, this is likely a decent preview of potential deals in this industry to come.

Intel spins off noncore assets, announces new initiative​

April 1: CEO Lip-Bu Tan got to work right away. Just weeks after he joined Intel, the company announced that it was going to spin off noncore assets so it could focus. He also said the company would launch new products, including custom semiconductors for customers.

March​

Intel names a new CEO​

March 12: Intel announced that industry veteran, and former board member, Lip-Bu Tan would return to the company as CEO on March 18. At the time of his appointment, Tan said Intel would be an “engineering-focused company” under his leadership.

February​

Intel’s Ohio chip plant gets delayed again​

February 28: Intel was supposed to start operating its first chip fabrication plant in Ohio this year. Instead, the company slowed down construction on the plant for the second time in February. Now the $28 billion semiconductor project won’t wrap up construction until 2030 and may not even open until 2031.

Senators call for more chip export restrictions​

February 3: U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo), wrote a letter to Commerce Secretary Nominee-Designate Howard Lutnick urging the Trump administration to further restrict AI chip exports. The letter specifically referred to Nvidia’s H20 AI chips, which were used in the training of DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model.

January​

DeepSeek releases its open “reasoning” model​

January 27: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek caused quite the stir in Silicon Valley when it released the open version of its R1 “reasoning” model. While this isn’t semiconductor news specifically, the sheer alarm in the AI and semiconductor industries DeepSeek’s release caused continues to have ripple effects on the chip industry.

Joe Biden’s executive order on chip exports​

January 13: With just a week left in office, former president Joe Biden proposed sweeping new export restrictions on U.S.-made AI chips. This order created a three-tier structure that determined how many U.S. chips can be exported to each country. Under this proposal, Tier 1 countries faced no restrictions; Tier 2 countries had a chip purchase limit for the first time; and Tier 3 countries got additional restrictions.

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei weighs in on chip export restrictions​

January 6: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei co-wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal endorsing existing AI chip export controls and pointing to them as a reason why China’s AI market was behind the U.S.’. He also called on incoming president Donald Trump to impose further restrictions and to close loopholes that have allowed AI companies in China to still get their hands on these chips.