Nvidia CEO Huang Says U.S. Must 'Take China Seriously' as AI, Chip Competitor

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the U.S. must treat China as a serious competitor in chips, artificial intelligence and research, urging competition through innovation and infrastructure rather than underestimation. He spoke Wednesday during an interview at Nvidia's GTC conference in Berlin, citing reported collaboration between DeepSeek and Huawei on chip design. "If there's any country that can manufacture things at scale, it's China," Huang said, praising its capacity for mass chip production, open AI models and AI researcher development. "We have to recognize we're up against a very, very powerful competitor." He added that U.S. research labs, computing systems and infrastructure remain the world's strongest. The remarks come as Huawei gains share in China's AI accelerator market. IDC data showed Nvidia at 34% and Huawei at 28% in the first half of 2026, with Nvidia shipping 678,000 accelerators to China, down 44% year over year. Huang has previously urged the U.S. to embrace Chinese AI models rather than ban them. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said China trails the U.S. by about six months in AI but could win through free products.