Nvidia CEO Says US Chip Export Curbs on China Have Backfired

US restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China have not slowed down Chinese tech development, but instead pushed it forward, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Speaking at the Computex technology conference in Taipei on Wednesday, Huang said Washington’s efforts to block Chinese access to powerful AI chips had the opposite effect of what was intended.

“The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang said.

“I think, all in all, the export control was a failure.”

China’s AI Industry Surges Despite Restrictions

The United States has placed successive restrictions on the export of high-performance GPUs and AI chips to China over the past few years, aiming to prevent China from using them for military purposes and to safeguard US leadership in artificial intelligence. However, Huang argued that these measures only energized China's tech community.

“China has a vibrant technology ecosystem, and it’s very important to realise that China has 50% of the world’s AI researchers, and China is incredibly good at software,” Huang said.

The head of Nvidia — a company that designs chips widely used in AI systems — said it has taken a major financial hit due to the rules. Nvidia’s market share in China’s AI chip sector has dropped from 95% at the start of the Biden administration to about 50% now, and the firm has written off billions in sales.

Huang Visits Beijing as Pressure Grows

Last month, Huang made an unexpected trip to Beijing, where he met with Liang Wenfeng, the founder of AI startup DeepSeek, as reported by the Financial Times. He also met with officials from the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. According to reports, the discussions focused on designing new chips that would not trigger Washington’s latest export bans.

These meetings came shortly after the US introduced tighter restrictions that stopped Nvidia from shipping even its H20 chips — which were specifically developed to comply with earlier Biden-era regulations — to China. The US government told Nvidia the move was necessary to prevent the chips from being “used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China”.

US Adjusts Policy, China Pushes Back

While the Trump administration last week lifted some chip restrictions following pushback from allied countries, it also issued new warnings. It told foreign companies that buying Chinese-made semiconductors — specifically those from Huawei, such as its Ascend AI chips — could violate US export laws.

The Chinese government quickly condemned the move.

In a statement on Wednesday, China’s commerce ministry accused the US of “abusing export controls to suppress and contain China”. It called the warning “typical unilateral bullying and protectionism, which seriously undermine the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain”.

The ministry further warned that “any organisation or individual that enforces or assists in enforcing such measures” could be violating Chinese law.

As tensions rise between Washington and Beijing, industry leaders like Huang are signaling that the strategy of cutting off China from US technology may need rethinking — especially when it ends up boosting the very competition it aimed to contain.