May 28, 2025 • 13 mins
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discusses his company's earnings, his optimistic outlook for growth in AI and the impact of US chip curbs on China. He speaks with host Ed Ludlow.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let's bring in and video CEO Jensen Wang following the
company's earnings and analysts call Jensen, thank you for your
time here on Bloomberg Technology. You went into great detail
about what's happening, particularly in China. I just wanted to
go over something that I felt wasn't asked, which is
fiscal second quarter sales forty five billion dollars plus or
(00:28):
minus two percent eight billion dollars of lost revenue opportunity,
specifically relating to China in eight twenty. It seems as
if you made up somewhere some demand for a different product,
or from a different geography, or from a different corner
of the market.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What was that, Well, we got a.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Whole bunch of engines firing right now. The biggest one,
of course, is the reasoning AI inference. The demand is
just after the charts, you see the popularity of all
these AI services now Chat, GBT, Gemini, you know, so
on and so forth, GROC. I mean, they're just doing
incredibly well across the board, and all of the APIs
(01:09):
that they serve out and all the agentic AI services
that are built on top of them, they're all doing
incredibly well. I think that there's just a giant breakthrough
in AI's capability, and inferencing has just become a giant workload. Second,
people realize that Blackwell is just a home run envey
Link seventy two is a home run architecture. We designed
(01:31):
it to be a thinking machine, a reasoning AI system.
And I think people now the confluence of the breakthrough
and reasoning AI and the availability you know now the
emergence of Grace Blackwell and VEALINGK seventy two perfect timing.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I think that that's at the core a big part
of it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And the second part of it is that our supply
chain is growing and we're really ramping it up and
they're doing fantastically for us, and so all of these
things are all coming together.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And so it is fair to say that some of
that additional supply on Blackwell and the demand for black
Bell kind of made up for the opportunity lost in China,
at least in the outlook for this current period.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
But you know, you just can't you can't underestimate the
importance of the China market. This is the second largest
AI market, This is the home of the world's largest
population of AI researchers, and we want all of the
world's AI researchers and all of the world's developers to
be building on American stacks. And so, you know, irrespective
(02:36):
of the nearer term revenue success that we have, we
can't ignore the fact that the Chinese market is very important.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
You explained again in some detail that at least in
the Hopper architecture you have engineered down to the lowest
spec possible. It's not possible to do anything different with
Hopper for the Chinese market. But in your conceit iteration
for a different architecture or a chip for the Chinese market,
is that what we're talking about? A new design or
(03:06):
new class? And have you made that proposal to the administration?
Just designing from the ground up and new chip.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
We're still thinking through that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
They're just the limitations are quite quite stringent, quite limited,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
H twenty is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You know, as far down as we could take a Hopper,
we don't know how to make it even even less,
and so that's really the limit. But but so there
aren't there aren't you know, the limitations are quite stringent.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So we have we have to really think through it.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Whatever we make ultimately has to add value to the market.
And so it's it's a really tight rope because because
the Chinese competitors have evolved and advanced greatly over the
last year like everybody else, they're you know, doubling, quadrupling
their capabilities every year, and the vlume is increasing substantially.
(04:01):
And remember these are data center chips. They don't have
to be small, they could be quite large and and
and you know they without American technology, UH, the availability
of Chinese technology will fail the market. And so you know,
we whatever we offer has to at least at least
be competitive and has to add value to the market.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Tensen, Does Huawei have an AI accelerator or a GPU
that is performance is H twenty or is performance of
other classes of GPU that you make?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Uh, Huawei's technology based on based on our our best
understanding at the moment, UH, and we have a lot
of ground truth there is probably comparable to an age
two hundred and so they're they're they've been moving quite
fast and and they've also offered UH this news system called.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Cloud Matrix UH that is that is scales.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Up to even a larger system than our latest generation
Grace Blackwell and so there. Huawei, as you know, is
a formidable technology company and they're not sitting still and
they look for ways to look for ways to compete,
and they're quite formidable.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
With that in mind, you've kind of explained the landscape
now in Vidia's ability to operate in China. I mean,
you and I this year alone have already discussed the
idea that they're fifty percent of the world's AI researchers
in or from China. But are you having a sense
of the vacuum created that those big names I think
about ten Cent or Ali Baba or by Do that
were buyers of age twenty that they've already pivoted and
(05:40):
turned to the offering from Huawei because of the policy
that is in place.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, they have no choice, but to you know, of
our one of the one of the challenges of the
changing regulations is the ability for markets to trust the
Nvidia and ultimately emerge CAN platforms and so so, Uh,
it's prudent I think for the Chinese customers uh to
(06:08):
make sure that they they develop their stack on Huawei
and because it's hard to rely on American technology at
this point, and so that's one of the that's one
of the the unfortunate, unfortunate parts of of changing policies.
But anyhow, you know, I have every confidence that that
if able to compete, American companies will compete. This is
(06:32):
in a to to uh uh, to write off American
technology companies is not smart.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
This is this is the home of of of.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Some of the brightest computer scientists in the world. American
companies are incredibly competitive. We just have to have the
confidence to go compete, and if we have the confidence
to compete, we will win.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You said during the ending school that you trust President
Trump and that the president has an vision and a plan.
Could I ask if you've talked to him about that
plan and if it includes coordinating with Nvidia on policy
adjustment that relates to changes in technology export controls.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, obviously I don't know all of his ideas, but
let me tell you about two that are incredible. The
first one is utterly visionary, the idea of tariffs being
a pillar of a bold vision to reindustrialize to onshore
manufacturing and motivate the world to invest in the United States.
(07:35):
And it's just an incredible vision. I think this is
going to be a transformative idea for the next century
for us. We're all in on the idea where we're
setting up plants and encouraging our partners from around the
world to invest the United States, and we have a
lot of stuff going on, and so I'm very excited
about that. The second, the second major idea is to
(07:55):
we send the AI Diffusion Rule, recognizing that this is
an about limiting American technology, but this is about accelerating
American stacks around the world to make sure that before
it's too late, that the world builds on American stacks
during this extraordinary time the era. And so these two
(08:17):
initiatives are completely visionary and it's going to be transformative
for America.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Jensen. In the time that you and I have been
on air having this conversation, some news is broken from
US Secretary of State Rubio who has said that the
US will begin revoking some Chinese student visas. What I
wanted to ask you is that with US government limits
on foreign student visas, how does that impact a company
like Nvidia. I think about the size but also composition
(08:44):
of your engineering talent here in California and elsewhere in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I believe the administration still feels very strongly about about
the incredible importance of immigration.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Look, I'm an immigrant.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Uh. I know many immigrants that that came and came
to United States to to build a great life. And
many of us, many of us have contributed greatly to
the technology industry and and uh in.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
The United States. I believe that that's going to have
to continue. Uh.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Remember, remember, you know, people from all over the world
want to come to United States. This is just such
an extraordinary country with such incredible opportunities.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We want the brightest to come here.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We don't want we don't want others to you know,
we we don't want everybody to be able to come here.
And there should be there should be rules and and
but nonetheless for the ones that that really can make
a contribution, want to make a difference, and we want
to make it possible for them to come here and
and bring their great ideas, bring their great intellect and
help us build in a great America. And so I
(09:50):
think I think the administration is all in on that,
and I don't think anything that they've said changes that.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Jensen I surveyed our Bloomberg Technology audience around the world
for questions for you, and I think the most common
question is understanding who Nvidia's customers are away from the hyperscalers,
but actually many questions about Elon Inc. And whether Tesla
and Xai and Aggregate might actually be one of the
biggest customers you have. You think about not just the
(10:17):
data center chips, but this chip specific for optimists or
in the cars, the omniverse component.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Could you speak a little about that. We do.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
We do a lot of business with Tesla and Xai Elons. Elons,
as you know, is just an extraordinary engineer and I
love working with him. We've built some amazing computers together.
We're going to build many more computers together. And the
work that he's doing in groc his self driving car,
(10:52):
his optimists, these are these are all, every single one
of them world class, every single one of them revolutionary,
every single one of them are going to be gigantic opportunities,
and we're delighted. I'm delighted to be working with him
on that.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And so I think the.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
The optimist opportunities just right around the corner. It's very
likely that human robots are are going to be robots
that we can deploy into the world relatively easily. And
this is the first robot that really has a chance
to achieve the high volume and technology scale necessary to
advance technology.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And so I think this.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Is likely to be the next multi trillion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I'm very excited for him.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Tensen. Let's end by talking about Europe. You alluded to
a trip you're taking next week. It sounds as if
the infrastructure build out in Europe is coming. Where will
you be visiting and who we be speaking with?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, I'm going to leave the who as a surprise
for all of you, but I'll be seeing lots of
heads of states, and I'll be in France, in UK
and Germany, UH and UH Belgium, and and I think
that that the the It's very clear now that every
(12:11):
under every country recognizes that artificial intelligence, like electricity, like internet,
like communications, is part of a national infrastructure. No, no
society could do without intelligence, as you know, And and
there's an awakening that every country has to has to
take some initiative to ensure that that their country and
(12:32):
their society has access to artificial intelligence. And so we're
we're really delighted to be able to to work with
uh uh uh uh. You know, work with the European
UH countries to to bring AI infrastructure to them and
work with them to build AI factories. There's an UN
team number of AI factory projects in discussion and development
(12:55):
and and so so I'm really excited to make this trip.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We're going to be all over Europe.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
MH.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Convidia CEO Jansen Wang, thank you, thank you, good to
see you.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let's bring in and video CEO Jensen Wang following the
company's earnings and analysts call Jensen, thank you for your
time here on Bloomberg Technology. You went into great detail
about what's happening, particularly in China. I just wanted to
go over something that I felt wasn't asked, which is
fiscal second quarter sales forty five billion dollars plus or
(00:28):
minus two percent eight billion dollars of lost revenue opportunity,
specifically relating to China in eight twenty. It seems as
if you made up somewhere some demand for a different product,
or from a different geography, or from a different corner
of the market.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What was that, Well, we got a.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Whole bunch of engines firing right now. The biggest one,
of course, is the reasoning AI inference. The demand is
just after the charts, you see the popularity of all
these AI services now Chat, GBT, Gemini, you know, so
on and so forth, GROC. I mean, they're just doing
incredibly well across the board, and all of the APIs
(01:09):
that they serve out and all the agentic AI services
that are built on top of them, they're all doing
incredibly well. I think that there's just a giant breakthrough
in AI's capability, and inferencing has just become a giant workload. Second,
people realize that Blackwell is just a home run envey
Link seventy two is a home run architecture. We designed
(01:31):
it to be a thinking machine, a reasoning AI system.
And I think people now the confluence of the breakthrough
and reasoning AI and the availability you know now the
emergence of Grace Blackwell and VEALINGK seventy two perfect timing.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I think that that's at the core a big part
of it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And the second part of it is that our supply
chain is growing and we're really ramping it up and
they're doing fantastically for us, and so all of these
things are all coming together.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And so it is fair to say that some of
that additional supply on Blackwell and the demand for black
Bell kind of made up for the opportunity lost in China,
at least in the outlook for this current period.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
But you know, you just can't you can't underestimate the
importance of the China market. This is the second largest
AI market, This is the home of the world's largest
population of AI researchers, and we want all of the
world's AI researchers and all of the world's developers to
be building on American stacks. And so, you know, irrespective
(02:36):
of the nearer term revenue success that we have, we
can't ignore the fact that the Chinese market is very important.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
You explained again in some detail that at least in
the Hopper architecture you have engineered down to the lowest
spec possible. It's not possible to do anything different with
Hopper for the Chinese market. But in your conceit iteration
for a different architecture or a chip for the Chinese market,
is that what we're talking about? A new design or
(03:06):
new class? And have you made that proposal to the administration?
Just designing from the ground up and new chip.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
We're still thinking through that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
They're just the limitations are quite quite stringent, quite limited,
if you will.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
H twenty is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You know, as far down as we could take a Hopper,
we don't know how to make it even even less,
and so that's really the limit. But but so there
aren't there aren't you know, the limitations are quite stringent.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So we have we have to really think through it.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Whatever we make ultimately has to add value to the market.
And so it's it's a really tight rope because because
the Chinese competitors have evolved and advanced greatly over the
last year like everybody else, they're you know, doubling, quadrupling
their capabilities every year, and the vlume is increasing substantially.
(04:01):
And remember these are data center chips. They don't have
to be small, they could be quite large and and
and you know they without American technology, UH, the availability
of Chinese technology will fail the market. And so you know,
we whatever we offer has to at least at least
be competitive and has to add value to the market.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Tensen, Does Huawei have an AI accelerator or a GPU
that is performance is H twenty or is performance of
other classes of GPU that you make?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Uh, Huawei's technology based on based on our our best
understanding at the moment, UH, and we have a lot
of ground truth there is probably comparable to an age
two hundred and so they're they're they've been moving quite
fast and and they've also offered UH this news system called.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Cloud Matrix UH that is that is scales.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Up to even a larger system than our latest generation
Grace Blackwell and so there. Huawei, as you know, is
a formidable technology company and they're not sitting still and
they look for ways to look for ways to compete,
and they're quite formidable.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
With that in mind, you've kind of explained the landscape
now in Vidia's ability to operate in China. I mean,
you and I this year alone have already discussed the
idea that they're fifty percent of the world's AI researchers
in or from China. But are you having a sense
of the vacuum created that those big names I think
about ten Cent or Ali Baba or by Do that
were buyers of age twenty that they've already pivoted and
(05:40):
turned to the offering from Huawei because of the policy
that is in place.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, they have no choice, but to you know, of
our one of the one of the challenges of the
changing regulations is the ability for markets to trust the
Nvidia and ultimately emerge CAN platforms and so so, Uh,
it's prudent I think for the Chinese customers uh to
(06:08):
make sure that they they develop their stack on Huawei
and because it's hard to rely on American technology at
this point, and so that's one of the that's one
of the the unfortunate, unfortunate parts of of changing policies.
But anyhow, you know, I have every confidence that that
if able to compete, American companies will compete. This is
(06:32):
in a to to uh uh, to write off American
technology companies is not smart.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
This is this is the home of of of.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Some of the brightest computer scientists in the world. American
companies are incredibly competitive. We just have to have the
confidence to go compete, and if we have the confidence
to compete, we will win.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You said during the ending school that you trust President
Trump and that the president has an vision and a plan.
Could I ask if you've talked to him about that
plan and if it includes coordinating with Nvidia on policy
adjustment that relates to changes in technology export controls.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, obviously I don't know all of his ideas, but
let me tell you about two that are incredible. The
first one is utterly visionary, the idea of tariffs being
a pillar of a bold vision to reindustrialize to onshore
manufacturing and motivate the world to invest in the United States.
(07:35):
And it's just an incredible vision. I think this is
going to be a transformative idea for the next century
for us. We're all in on the idea where we're
setting up plants and encouraging our partners from around the
world to invest the United States, and we have a
lot of stuff going on, and so I'm very excited
about that. The second, the second major idea is to
(07:55):
we send the AI Diffusion Rule, recognizing that this is
an about limiting American technology, but this is about accelerating
American stacks around the world to make sure that before
it's too late, that the world builds on American stacks
during this extraordinary time the era. And so these two
(08:17):
initiatives are completely visionary and it's going to be transformative
for America.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Jensen. In the time that you and I have been
on air having this conversation, some news is broken from
US Secretary of State Rubio who has said that the
US will begin revoking some Chinese student visas. What I
wanted to ask you is that with US government limits
on foreign student visas, how does that impact a company
like Nvidia. I think about the size but also composition
(08:44):
of your engineering talent here in California and elsewhere in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I believe the administration still feels very strongly about about
the incredible importance of immigration.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Look, I'm an immigrant.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Uh. I know many immigrants that that came and came
to United States to to build a great life. And
many of us, many of us have contributed greatly to
the technology industry and and uh in.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
The United States. I believe that that's going to have
to continue. Uh.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Remember, remember, you know, people from all over the world
want to come to United States. This is just such
an extraordinary country with such incredible opportunities.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We want the brightest to come here.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We don't want we don't want others to you know,
we we don't want everybody to be able to come here.
And there should be there should be rules and and
but nonetheless for the ones that that really can make
a contribution, want to make a difference, and we want
to make it possible for them to come here and
and bring their great ideas, bring their great intellect and
help us build in a great America. And so I
(09:50):
think I think the administration is all in on that,
and I don't think anything that they've said changes that.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Jensen I surveyed our Bloomberg Technology audience around the world
for questions for you, and I think the most common
question is understanding who Nvidia's customers are away from the hyperscalers,
but actually many questions about Elon Inc. And whether Tesla
and Xai and Aggregate might actually be one of the
biggest customers you have. You think about not just the
(10:17):
data center chips, but this chip specific for optimists or
in the cars, the omniverse component.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Could you speak a little about that. We do.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
We do a lot of business with Tesla and Xai Elons. Elons,
as you know, is just an extraordinary engineer and I
love working with him. We've built some amazing computers together.
We're going to build many more computers together. And the
work that he's doing in groc his self driving car,
(10:52):
his optimists, these are these are all, every single one
of them world class, every single one of them revolutionary,
every single one of them are going to be gigantic opportunities,
and we're delighted. I'm delighted to be working with him
on that.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And so I think the.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
The optimist opportunities just right around the corner. It's very
likely that human robots are are going to be robots
that we can deploy into the world relatively easily. And
this is the first robot that really has a chance
to achieve the high volume and technology scale necessary to
advance technology.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And so I think this.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Is likely to be the next multi trillion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I'm very excited for him.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Tensen. Let's end by talking about Europe. You alluded to
a trip you're taking next week. It sounds as if
the infrastructure build out in Europe is coming. Where will
you be visiting and who we be speaking with?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, I'm going to leave the who as a surprise
for all of you, but I'll be seeing lots of
heads of states, and I'll be in France, in UK
and Germany, UH and UH Belgium, and and I think
that that the the It's very clear now that every
(12:11):
under every country recognizes that artificial intelligence, like electricity, like internet,
like communications, is part of a national infrastructure. No, no
society could do without intelligence, as you know, And and
there's an awakening that every country has to has to
take some initiative to ensure that that their country and
(12:32):
their society has access to artificial intelligence. And so we're
we're really delighted to be able to to work with
uh uh uh uh. You know, work with the European
UH countries to to bring AI infrastructure to them and
work with them to build AI factories. There's an UN
team number of AI factory projects in discussion and development
(12:55):
and and so so I'm really excited to make this trip.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We're going to be all over Europe.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
MH.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Convidia CEO Jansen Wang, thank you, thank you, good to
see you.
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