NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has once again found himself at the epicenter of the U.S.-China tech rivalry after warning that “China is going to win the AI race”, in comments made at the Financial Times Future of AI Summit. His words sent shockwaves across both Wall Street and Washington, triggering immediate clarification just hours later.
“As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI,” Huang wrote on X (formerly Twitter) following the FT report. “It’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.”
Despite the walk-back, the message was clear: China’s AI momentum is real, and the U.S. can’t afford complacency, not even for a millisecond.
The Race Between Two Worlds
NVIDIA, now the world’s most valuable company at a staggering $5 trillion market cap, sits squarely between the two global AI superpowers. Its chips power nearly every major AI model on Earth, from OpenAI and Anthropic in the U.S. to Baidu and Alibaba in China, or at least they did, before the export bans began to bite.
Beijing’s access to NVIDIA’s cutting-edge chips has become one of the defining battle lines in the AI Cold War. The U.S. government, under President Donald Trump, has restricted sales of NVIDIA’s most advanced Blackwell GPUs, insisting they be reserved exclusively for American customers.
“We will let them deal with NVIDIA, but not in terms of the most advanced,” Trump said in a 60 Minutes interview. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States.”
The restrictions have left NVIDIA walking a tightrope between compliance and market demand. The company has avoided seeking new export licenses to China, citing what Huang diplomatically described as “Beijing’s stance toward us.”
A Balancing Act with Billion-Dollar Stakes
Earlier this year, the Trump administration allowed NVIDIA to resume sales of its toned-down H20 chips to China under a deal that granted Washington a 15% revenue cut. It was a short-lived victory: Beijing reportedly instructed domestic firms to stop buying those chips soon after, accelerating its push for homegrown AI silicon.
That puts NVIDIA in a complex position, the engine of global AI, yet a hostage to geopolitics.
At GTC Washington last month, Huang made his stance explicit:
“We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that. We want the world built on American tech. But a policy that causes America to lose half the world’s AI developers is not beneficial in the long term; it hurts us more.”
He has also pointed to U.S. regulatory friction and energy costs as reasons China could pull ahead, particularly as Beijing doubles down on massive government-backed AI infrastructure and energy-efficient datacenters.
A CEO Between Two Giants
Huang’s delicate diplomacy reflects his unique position. On one hand, he has praised President Trump’s energy and manufacturing policies, even echoing the former president’s iconic slogan on stage last week:
“Thank you for helping make America great again.”
On the other hand, he has consistently advocated for access to China’s vast AI developer ecosystem, which represents nearly half of the world’s total. NVIDIA’s long-term growth, he argues, depends on serving both sides of the Pacific.
Still, his latest remarks and rapid clarification underscore the uncomfortable truth: the AI race isn’t purely about technology. It’s about influence, ideology, and infrastructure. And while NVIDIA builds the hardware that powers both empires, the contest over who wields that power remains as fierce as ever.
The Takeaway
Jensen Huang’s comments may have sparked confusion, but they also reveal the fragile balance at the heart of the global AI economy.
China is fast, ambitious, and state-driven. America is innovative, decentralized, and developer-driven.
If Huang is right, only the side that learns to accelerate without isolating itself will truly win the AI century.
