Fontes: Wccftech, Yahoo! Finance e MyDrivers.With the US's new trade policy reaching official implementation, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has reacted to the decision, stating that it will have an "adverse" effect on the mainland China market.
The Biden administration recently revised its export restrictions on China, which will now include blocking the supply of several AI chips to China. The US believes that with the rapid advancements of artificial intelligence in China, the nation might gain a military edge over them, which is why they believe restricting the supply of AI GPUs such as NVIDIA's H800 and A800 would be the right move. However, with the new policies, the biggest GPU manufacturer NVIDIA has placed its reservations, stating that it will definitely have an impact on its market share within mainland China.
In an interview with local media, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang stated that Team Green respects the decision of the US to put the nation's interest in front of business, and NVIDIA will ultimately comply with the newly implemented policies. Moreover, the CEO stated that NVIDIA aims to expand its global markets rapidly, and also desires to cater to its well-established clients in China as well. Jensen's remarks do hint towards the fact that NVIDIA will "forcibly" have to adhere to the new policies, putting mainland Chinese customers at the back, at least for now.
Moreover, NVIDIA also realizes the fact that China's "homegrown" AI products hold good competition as well, with Chinese firms like Huawei as well, in order to cater to the AI needs in the region. While I see this as a "traditional" statement, NVIDIA should be worried about Chinese firms closing the gap, since the development of in-house solutions is taking a huge increase in China, especially those related to the AI hype in the country. The fierce competition NVIDIA currently faces is from Huawei, who is said to have developed AI chips that have comparable raw computing power.
A Chinese AI firm iFlytek has put out claims that Huawei's Ascend AI GPUs are on par with NVIDIA's current lineup of AI chips, and with the new US curbs, Huawei has the golden opportunity to cash on the huge demand from the AI industry. Huawei can prove to be a serious threat to NVIDIA's well-established business in China, given that the firm could output a consistent supply of AI GPUs, and develop its software resources rapidly, to provide a complete package to potential clients.
It will be interesting to see how NVIDIA shapes itself up with the new US policies since the company has forecasted huge revenue targets, in which the Chinese consumer base holds great importance. Either Team Green will come up with further "cut-down variants", or find a workaround for the new policies.