Jensen Huang: If you look closely at Huawei's smartphones, you can understand the technological miracles within; China's pace of innovation is unstoppable, and its supply chain is a world miracle!

On the evening of July 20, CCTV News' "Face to Face" aired an interview with Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

In the interview, Jensen Huang praised DeepSeek and Huawei, stating that the Chinese AI market will progress regardless of NVIDIA's involvement.

Below is the full text of the interview:

On July 16, 2025, the third China International Supply Chain Promotion Expo, hosted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, opened as scheduled at the Shunyi Hall of the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing, gathering 651 enterprises and institutions from 75 countries and regions. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, who attended the expo for the first time, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony.

At the opening ceremony of the expo, Jensen Huang did not wear his iconic leather jacket but instead donned a Tang suit and began his speech in Chinese.

Reporter: You started in Chinese, then switched away, and finally returned to Chinese. Why?

Jensen Huang: If I spoke in Chinese for half an hour, it would take too much time, and I was particularly nervous. I learned my Chinese casually in the United States, by myself.

The Supply Chain Expo is the world's first national-level exhibition themed on supply chains. Against the backdrop of accelerating changes in the global landscape and intertwined international turmoil, the global supply chain is under significant pressure. The theme of this year's expo, "Linking the World, Creating the Future Together," expresses the vision of achieving win-win outcomes amid uncertainty.

Reporter: Not only NVIDIA, but global companies are facing the same issues. To what extent do you think this expo can help businesses?

Jensen Huang: China operates one of the top supply chain systems in the world, with its scale, complexity, diversity, the types of products manufactured, and the technological content being a world-class miracle. China also provides equipment, control systems, and components for other global supply chains, so China not only manages its own supply chain but also develops technologies and products to help others with their supply chains.

During the third Supply Chain Expo, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade released the 2025 version of the "Global Supply Chain Promotion Report" and the global supply chain index matrix. Relevant data indicates that despite the increasing uncertainty and instability factors in the world economy, the promoting factors remain dominant.

Jensen Huang: The global supply chain is extremely large and interconnected. NVIDIA benefits from an extremely precise, advanced, and highly technical supply chain, and at the same time, our supply chain is global; we have manufacturing partners all over the world. To build our AI supercomputers, we need 100 to 200 different technology partners to support our products.

Jensen Huang explained that the supply chain integrates the expertise of companies and countries around the world. As a result, the quality of the final product is better than what any single company could achieve alone. The United States cannot produce all products independently; it is neither realistic nor necessary In the past, this was called production manufacturing, but now it is called supply chain management. Although production is still an important part, supply chain integration is very complex and can be considered one of humanity's greatest inventions.

At this year's Chain Expo, the number of American exhibitors increased by 15% compared to the previous session, continuing to rank first among foreign exhibitors. Among them, NVIDIA, which participated in the Chain Expo for the first time, brought multiple solutions in the field of artificial intelligence, including robotic simulation, digital twins, and big data learning. NVIDIA arranged for over 100 technicians to provide services to visitors, and Jensen Huang himself visited China for the third time this year. Jensen Huang stated that he feels very welcomed in China and sincerely believes that his customers and partners value and welcome him.

Just before this visit to China, NVIDIA's total market value briefly surpassed $4 trillion on July 9, becoming the world's first company with a market value exceeding $4 trillion. The day before the opening of the third Chain Expo, Jensen Huang publicly announced that the U.S. had approved the export of the H20 chip to China.

The H20 chip is an AI accelerator specifically designed by NVIDIA for the Chinese market, with reduced computing power and performance compared to the H100, suitable for training and inference of vertical models, but unable to meet the needs of trillion-scale model training. Nevertheless, the U.S. issued an export ban on the H20 to China in April this year, causing NVIDIA's stock price to drop nearly 7% at one point.

Reporter: Some say that the H20 does not meet the needs of the Chinese market, and others worry that this may hinder domestic innovation. What do you think about this?

Jensen Huang: The pace of innovation in China cannot be stopped. Of course, I believe NVIDIA can make significant contributions. AI is an extremely complex system, and besides chips, there are systems, network technologies, AI infrastructure, software, AI algorithms, and the top-level application services. On one hand, the development of AI requires innovation at every layer of the system, but if progress at a certain layer is not fast enough, engineers are smart enough to compensate through innovations at upper and lower layers, thus driving the entire system forward.

Jensen Huang especially mentioned that he has to admire the amazing innovation capabilities of DeepSeek, a company whose R1 model is a true innovation. It redesigns many operational methods of AI models, allowing them to fully leverage the advantages of the H20 architecture, which is a very creative approach. So even though DeepSeek is built on H20, they still achieved world-class results, which also shows that researchers and developers can fully adjust according to the characteristics of different technological layers.

Jensen Huang: I am very optimistic and confident about China's innovation capabilities, and they can adapt regardless of the resources at hand. Although the H20 is not NVIDIA's top product, its capabilities are still outstanding. It is this architecture that defines, or even creates, the current AI revolution, so even today it remains quite impressive

Jensen Huang stated in May this year that chip restriction measures have nearly halved NVIDIA's market share in China. He has clearly expressed his views on multiple occasions, repeatedly calling for the relaxation of technology export restrictions to allow American companies to fairly enter China, the world's largest semiconductor market.

Reporter: How important is the Chinese market to you?

Jensen Huang: China is not just one of many markets; it is a unique market. The vitality, innovation capability, development momentum, and the speed of industry development in this market are unparalleled. We came to China 30 years ago when there were only two tech companies, Lenovo and Great Wall. Many of my old friends grew up in the PC industry together. I want to especially mention a few of my outstanding friends in China: Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi, BYD.

Jensen Huang mentioned that he met Lei Jun in Beijing this time and has been collaborating with him since the founding of Xiaomi.

Jensen Huang: I have been working with Lei Jun for a long time. We have worked together on mobile phones, and we are currently jointly developing artificial intelligence, autonomous driving software, and many other projects. The Chinese market is vibrant and has excellent engineers with outstanding innovation capabilities. The number of computer scientists in China is one of the highest in the world, the only country that can compare is the United States, and the scale of the end consumer group is extremely large.

Jensen Huang stated that all suppliers need customers, and the Chinese market is very unique and should never be taken lightly. The unexpected consequences and long-term impacts of not participating in the Chinese market, although difficult to predict, he doubts the results will be optimistic.

The birth of NVIDIA stemmed from Jensen Huang seizing a wave of opportunities brought by computer technology. Born in Taiwan in 1963, he moved to Thailand with his family at the age of 5, and at 10, he left Thailand for the United States, obtaining a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University before founding NVIDIA in 1993. In 1999, NVIDIA invented the GPU, making real-time programmable shading technology possible, which defined modern computer graphics and later revolutionary parallel computing.

Before NVIDIA promoted the widespread adoption of GPU-based parallel computing, mainstream computing architectures mainly relied on CPU-based serial computing models. At that time, many companies attempted to develop parallel computing architectures but failed. The startup NVIDIA, however, insisted on focusing on the field of parallel computing, and ultimately, the GPU became the foundation of NVIDIA's establishment.

Today, NVIDIA has become one of the most mainstream AI companies of this era, but the development of AI technology has also triggered fierce competition. According to statistics from the third-party research agency IDC, from 2023 to 2024, the share of domestic computing power in China's data center accelerator card market surged from 14% to 34.6%. This data reflects the changes in the market after restrictions on imported chips in China Jensen Huang introduced that if NVIDIA were not here, there would be other Chinese innovators and chip companies serving this market, and many cloud service providers would also develop their own chips. China also has many innovative enterprises, such as Huawei.

Jensen Huang: Huawei is not only highly innovative but also an extraordinarily large and powerful company. Huawei is much larger than us in terms of company size, personnel scale, and technical capabilities; they are both broad and deep. If someone has closely examined Huawei's smartphones, they would understand the technological marvel contained within. If you look at Huawei now, they excel in the field of autonomous driving, and their AI technology is also quite outstanding. This is a company with strong chip design capabilities, system design, and system software.

Jensen Huang believes that the AI market in China will progress regardless of whether NVIDIA is present. If NVIDIA were not here, Huawei would certainly find its own solutions. The achievements Huawei has made are completely worthy of respect and admiration; this is an extraordinary technology company. As long as they decide to focus and invest in a field, they will certainly excel. From the perspective of corporate philosophy, corporate culture, the challenges they have overcome, the achievements they have made, and the business they have built, there is no other word to describe them except "extraordinary"; their achievements are admirable.

When asked whether NVIDIA sees Huawei as a competitor or a partner, Jensen Huang said: “This company is still highly competitive; they are our competitors, but we can still admire and respect our competitors, and maintain a good relationship with them; competitors are not enemies. The world is vast, I hope we can continue to compete for many years to come, but my feelings towards them are admiration, respect, and a strong sense of competition.”

On July 17, during a "fireside chat" at the Chain Expo, Jensen Huang engaged in a deep dialogue with Wang Jian, director of the Zhijiang Laboratory and founder of Alibaba Cloud. The discussion ranged from "graphics processing units (GPUs)" to "superintelligence," open-source models, and even the integration of AI and bioengineering. They reviewed the evolution of artificial intelligence and boldly envisioned the source of the next technological wave.

Reporter: You once said that everything that moves could potentially be roboticized in the future, and very soon. How soon?

Jensen Huang: It's happening now. We see autonomous vehicles everywhere in China, and the development speed of autonomous driving technology here is faster than anywhere else. XPeng, Li Auto, Nio, Xiaomi, and BYD all have this technology. Therefore, the ability to integrate artificial intelligence, software, and mechanical systems is a very natural capability for China, and this presents an extraordinary opportunity for China In recent years, NVIDIA has continued to expand its R&D investment in China, establishing AI innovation centers in Shanghai and Beijing, and maintaining deep cooperation with several Chinese companies. According to Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's employee count in China has approached 4,000, covering multiple fields such as R&D, sales, and technical support.

From a graphics card company renowned among gamers to a leader in computing power infrastructure defining the AI era, NVIDIA has faced near bankruptcy twice during its transformation. Whether in chips or AI, the speed of technological iteration is extremely rapid, and Huang claims he cannot afford to relax or be complacent.

At NVIDIA's meetings, Huang often opens with a warning: "Our company is only 30 days away from bankruptcy."

In his work, his strict style has become a distinctive characteristic; he firmly believes that failures need to be faced publicly, so he points out specific mistakes in public settings to remind the team. However, in his personal life, he shows a completely different side, full of passion, vibrant energy, and humor, rarely revealing the strictness he displays at work. Huang has publicly stated multiple times that he plans to continue working until he is 80 years old, or even longer.

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