(Bloomberg) — Huawei Technologies Co. is part of a group of “very formidable” Nvidia Corp. competitors. in the race to produce the best AI chips, according to the head of the American company.
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Huawei, Intel Corp. and a growing group of semiconductor startups pose a significant challenge to Nvidia’s dominant position in the artificial intelligence accelerator market, CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Singapore on Wednesday. Shenzhen-based Huawei has become the de facto champion of chip technology in China and returned to the spotlight this year with a surprisingly advanced, Chinese-made smartphone processor.
“We have a lot of competitors, both in China and outside China,” Huang said. “Most of our competitors don’t really care where I am. They want to compete with us everywhere we go.
Questions about China have been the focus of Huang’s visit to Singapore, where he is meeting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to discuss the city-state’s strategy to compete in the global AI race. Nvidia’s chips have become the hottest product in the AI boom because they provide the most efficient method for training large data models like the one behind ChatGPT.
But the United States erected barriers to its sales to China, further tightening China’s access to Nvidia’s AI chips in mid-October. “We can’t let China get these chips. Period,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last Saturday.
Read more: Raimondo says trade needs more money to stop China chip production
China historically accounts for about 20% of Nvidia’s sales, Huang said Wednesday, and the company will continue to comply « fully » with trade regulations. It faces increasingly difficult trade tensions between the United States and China, which have targeted Nvidia’s AI chips as strategically important in the balance of power between the two major economies global. Nvidia will offer the Chinese market a new series of products complying with the latest rules issued by Washington, added the 60-year-old leader.
Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, serves Chinese customers in Singapore, Huang said. Among the largest Chinese companies present are ByteDance Ltd., whose TikTok business is a major employer locally, as well as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s international cloud operations. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Sales to city customers, particularly Chinese. The companies accounted for about 15% of Nvidia’s revenue in the quarter ended October, according to a regulatory filing.
Read more: Singapore sees $77 billion digital economy as key to greater growth
Singapore sees the expansion of its digital economy as a way to spur broader growth. It hosts less advanced chip manufacturing plants operated by Globalfoundries Inc. and other global players. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Nvidia’s go-to maker of AI accelerators, and NXP Semiconductors NV are also running a joint venture in the country.
Taiwan-born Huang co-founded Nvidia in the mid-1990s and is now receiving a hero’s welcome upon his return to Asia after his company’s leap into the billion-dollar stratosphere. Before meeting the Prime Minister of Singapore, he was in Tokyo to meet with Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura and discuss Japan’s potential to develop a national AI ecosystem.
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