Nvidia's Jensen Huang courts Washington amid China chip export debate

'China has twice the amount of energy we have as a nation and our economy is larger than theirs,' tech chief tells event in US capital

Nvidia Chief executive Jensen Huang signs an autograph while arriving for a meeting with a Senate committee in Washington.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang on Wednesday worked hard to influence Congress and the administration of US President Donald Trump on laws regarding semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

Mr Huang also appeared in a discussion hosted by Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank, during which he spoke on securing American leadership in the AI race.

"China has twice the amount of energy we have as a nation and our economy is larger than theirs – it makes no sense to me," he said.

Mr Huang was saying that Beijing had some advantages with AI development and the energy required to train large language models.

"We're generations ahead on chips, but don't be complacent."

He has often spoken out against strict chip export policies that stop powerful central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) being sold to China.

An increasingly adversarial relationship with China prompted the US to take a close look at its semiconductor export policies

Proponents of the policies say they protect a US lead in the increasingly important global race for AI dominance.

Some technology executives, however, have suggested that the export policies give China an incentive to create its own semiconductor infrastructure, which could ultimately harm US influence around the world.

Before the CSIS event, Mr Huang met members of the Senate banking, housing and urban affairs committee, pushing to eliminate a provision in a bill that would make it even harder for his company to sell chips to China.

Mr Huang signed autographs for onlookers in the Capitol building, but not everyone was as welcoming.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized what she described as his "closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill".

"Mr Huang should be brought in to testify publicly and under oath – not pushing his agenda in secret meetings," Ms Warren said.

US President Donald Trump is considering whether Nvidia should be allowed to sell its H200 GPUs to China.

Some White House officials have expressed concerns over national security and sought to keep China away from US-designed technology.

In late November, the Department of Justice arrested two US citizens for conspiring to “illegally export cutting-edge Nvidia” GPUs to China. Two Chinese citizens living in the US were also arrested and charged.

According to the indictment, the suspects managed to export about 400 Nvidia A100 GPUs between 2024 and 2025, and those involved in the smuggling received more than “$3.89 million in wire transfers” from China.

Although the indictment involves GPUs that are not nearly as powerful as Nvidia's top semiconductors, it has reinforced the worries of some elected officials.

The US Department of Justice indicted two US citizens and two Chinese nationals living in the US with conspiracy to illegally export Nvidia semiconductors to China.

“We cannot allow American innovation to fuel Beijing’s military ambitions,” read a social media post on X shortly after the indictment from the US House of Representatives select committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

In recent months, Nvidia has managed to secure a few wins in its efforts to sell some of its products to China.

The White House in August suggested that it would loosen restrictions on the company's less powerful H20 chips specifically designed for the Chinese market.

Yet media reports suggest that China has actually blocked the import of Nvidia's H20s due to an investigation by the country's authorities about alleged “backdoor features” that would allow the chips to be compromised.

“Nvidia GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors,” Nvidia said.