“If you weren’t in the chip industry and you wanted to start a chip company, what company would you start? You would start a GPU [company]. And there’s a whole bunch of GPU start-ups in China,” Huang reportedly said.
“The amount of resources that has been dedicated to this area in China … is quite massive, so you can’t underestimate them.”
Huang made similar remarks in a recent interview with the Financial Times, warning the Biden administration to be “careful” with its semiconductor restrictions, because “if [China] can’t buy from … the United States, they’ll just build it themselves”.
To comply with Washington’s rules, Nvidia currently offers lower-end versions of its most advanced GPUs that are tailor-made for the mainland Chinese market.
An Nvidia GPU seen during Computex Taipei 2023. Photo: Bloomberg
Huang kicked off his two-week tour in Taiwan on Saturday at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, where he gave a commencement address. He encouraged graduating students to “run hard” and seize the “golden opportunities” of an AI revolution, which he expects to change every business.
In a two-hour keynote speech at Computex Taipei on Monday, Huang unveiled a series of new products and services related to AI. They include an AI supercomputer platform called DGX GH200, which can help tech companies build large language models for generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google Cloud, Meta Platforms and Microsoft are expected to be among the first users.
During his whirlwind trip, Huang also met Morris Chang, founder of the world’s largest contract chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which builds Nvidia’s flagship chips such as the H100.
The two companies would see “substantial” growth in business cooperation over the next decade, driven by accelerated computing and generative AI, Huang was quoted as saying by Nikkei Asia.
