(Bloomberg) — Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang expressed confidence in his company’s trade partners and said there’s no evidence of its prized semiconductors being diverted to the Chinese market.
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Nvidia’s hardware is too large to be easily smuggled across borders and its customers are aware of the rules and self-monitoring, Huang told Bloomberg News on Saturday in Taipei.
Its latest flagship products are sold as multimillion-dollar integrated systems, which can contain as many as 72 graphics processing units and 36 processors. The Biden administration set up so-called AI diffusion rules to prevent shipments to other countries being diverted to China, which President Donald Trump has decided to cancel.
“There’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion. These are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons, and so you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon,” Huang, 62, said. “The important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed and everybody would like to continue to buy Nvidia technology. And so they monitor themselves very carefully.”
Huang spoke days after joining a US delegation to the Middle East led by the president, lauding the opening up of trade of Nvidia’s hardware. The scrapping of the Biden-era rules will help the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia acquire more of Nvidia’s industry-leading technology and expand their capabilities in artificial intelligence.
“With proper forecasting, we would be able to build the necessary technologies for everyone,” Huang said on Saturday, after being asked if he’d now have to prioritize Middle East clients.
The issue of Nvidia AI chip shipments and whether any of them violate US trade sanctions on China has led to a probe in Singapore, and remains a live topic of concern. Huang reiterated his opposition to trade limitations.
“Limiting American technology around the world is precisely wrong,” Huang said, welcoming Trump’s new measures. “It should be maximizing American technology around the world.”
–With assistance from Naman Tandon.
(Updates with comments on Middle East in sixth paragraph)
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