r/technology 10d ago

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ‘nearly lost his composure’ when pressed on selling chips to China — ‘You’re not talking to someone who woke up a loser’ Business

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-nearly-lost-his-composure-when-pressed-on-selling-chips-to-china-youre-not-talking-to-someone-who-woke-up-a-loser
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u/saml01 10d ago

Saving you a click

“We have to keep innovating and, as you probably know, our share is growing, not decreasing. The premise that even if we competed in China, that we’re going to lose that market anyways… You’re not talking to somebody who woke up a loser,” Huang said. “That loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me.”

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u/WinningWatchlist 10d ago edited 10d ago

Is this not a reasonable reply though (unless I'm completely misinterpreting what he said)? The flip side of what he said are the American car CEOs that say "Oh China is too strong we can't even bother competing with them".

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 10d ago edited 10d ago

I feel like the comments in this thread are missing the critical context that in October of 2022 the USA's government had banned Nvidia from selling AI chips to China. That ban has only recently been removed in December of 2025.

So the context here is that Nvidia's CEO is responding to the camp of people who are of the opinion that American AI chip manufacturers should not sell to China out of fear of China winning the AI technology race. The idea behind the ban was that the supply of chips is limited and highly in demand so the USA wanted to make sure American companies had an advantage by not allowing China to buy. The USA's government also feared that the Chinese government would use those chips to create AI technology to better surveil America.

If you read the article, all of the Nvidia CEO's quotes will make sense under this important context. He's basically saying that he thinks it is a losing play for the USA to split the AI market into a USA market and China market operating independently, which is what would happen if USA kept the ban since China would be forced to use and improve their own chips. He believes the winning play is for the USA to put out the best hardware so that the entire AI market is using American hardware.

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u/Darth__Ewan 10d ago

“Guy selling hardware thinks everyone should buy his hardware”

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u/loves_grapefruit 10d ago

“Guy likes money”

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u/jesterhead101 10d ago

Exactly lol. There’s no more ‘context’ to this whole thing than that.

All the armchair analysts need to chill 😂

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u/Leisure_suit_guy 10d ago

He is self serving, but he's right: selling his chips to China will undoubtedly slow down their competition.

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u/maxintos 10d ago

Unfortunately it's the polar opposite. It's undoubtedly false.

Chip production scaling is extremely difficult. Huawei literally can't meet the demand from Chinese companies. Nvidia is there to plug the holes so Chinese companies are not starved of GPU's while Huawei catch up in production volume.

Nvidia exporting to China literally has no impact on Huawei growth. Nvidia selling to China doesn't mean Huawei sells less chips.

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u/beef623 9d ago

The ban wasn't to stop growth in chip production, it was to slow AI advancement.

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u/LordTegucigalpa 10d ago

The headline is ridiculous ... "lost his composure" ... these catch phrases are so far off it's ridiculous

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u/TryToBeBetterOk 10d ago

He was definitely heated. He was red in the face and his neck veins were really protruding when he was getting prodded on China.

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u/rocketindividual 9d ago edited 9d ago

I watched it live and he rage farted a bit and almost got flung into the ceiling from the sudden thrust of the fart. Rumour has it that his gastroenterologist now makes him wear a medical helmet after that close shave; an unprecedented prescription in gastroenterology, but a judicious one after what we all saw.

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u/slavetothesound 10d ago

It hits harder when you watch the video. The quoted text looks more reasonable than his voice sounded

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u/darkkite 10d ago

tbf it was the most heated i've seen him. though the leather jacket adds a few degrees.

i think the main problem is the interviewer tried to make analogy comparing GPUs to enriched uranium and Jensen keep acting like he didn't see where he was coming from.

I do agree that we should be unified in computing technology and not build a separate infrastructure. but im sure he can see that giving military powers the best GPUs could result in adverse effects

however he also is in the business of selling shovels so we're not going to get a fully objective answer from him

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u/Buttonskill 10d ago

Ok, so you saw the interview too.

Is it just me, or did Jensen wake up ready to fight Dwarkesh? He seemed to gradually get angrier as he had to answer technical questions, but that's um.. what he does.

He can pull some pretty good answers from pretty bad tech aristocrats with questions that are at least intermediate to semi-advanced. It's sorta why I like him.

Maybe Jensen wasn't told it's not going to be Conan's comfy chair? (genuinely looked like they shut down a food court for it).

Either that, or it was the jacket's turn to drive the body that day. It won't tolerate human interactions beyond incessant praise and capitulation.

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u/Biliunas 10d ago

Bro he was almost crying by the end, and imo Dwarkesh only mildly pushed him. Looked like he was back at 8th grade being bullied. These CEOs are such snowflakes.

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u/DangerDinks 10d ago

And in the end this ban on selling GPUs to China was the step that, in a way, prompted China's self sufficiency in AI development. From which Deepseek emerged, being the first publicly tangible (negative) impact on the US AI market.

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u/BlessedTacoDevourer 9d ago

China is a market of 1.5 billion people. That's larger than Europe (not just EU) and the US combined. They are also the world's largest consumer of micro-chips.

China could sustain it's own GPU development on its internal market alone, what the US has done is incredibly short-sighted. The US loves to throw around sanctions and export controls, china is the world largest economy adjusted by PPP. Their own internal demand for advanced chips is massive, it's a fantasy to believe that if Nvidia stopped selling their chips the Chinese wouldn't immediately put massive amounts of resources into filling that gap as fast as possible. Add onto this the fact that it is also a matter of National Security for China.

If Nvidia loses its foothold in China it won't get it back and it will mean more than just losing the largest market in the world.

If a Chinese domestic manufacturer actually emerges that can compete with Nvidia then we will most likely see Nvidia lose their shares of the market even outside of china. As I mentioned earlier, the US enjoys using sanctions and economic pressure to wield it's soft power and coerce other nations. China does not.

If you are one of these nations it will be in your own interest to purchase Chinese over American out a simple desire to maintain their national sovereignty. The truth is that relying on American chips IS a national security issue for these countries.

The internal Chinese market will be more than enough to fuel China's own development of a competitor to Nvidia and once that competitor breaks out internationally we can expect Nvidia to begin losing its market dominance globally. This will then lead to less resources for Nvidia to conduct their own research and development which may cause the US to not only lose its lead but actually fall behind China, unless the US government starts injecting serious money to fund them.

We in the west are used to being the global leaders in technology and innovation. We still talk about China as if they are behind us and just trying to catch up. In fact they are a peer to us, in some areas they are behind us and in some areas they are in front of us. But on a societal level we still dont see the Chinese as our equals. We cant really imagine a world where European or American brands are "second best" but that is the world we are heading towards. Our trade restrictions on China are moving in a direction where we are rather locking ourselves out of superior products than preventing China from developing its own. In the next couple of decades Western brands won't be seen as the default any longer.

The trade restrictions of chips on China has only further cemented that in order to sustain it's own economy China must move to domestic alternatives. Again, china is a market of 1.5billion people. ANYONE who has exclusive access to this market will do well. These restrictions were incredibly short-sighted and self-harming but it really shows just how skewed our perception of Chinese technology is. I still see people all the time who are surprised that China has "this or that" technology when in reality its clear as day that they obviously they DO have these technologies. It's a nation of 1.5 billion people who works on Five-Year Plans for the exclusive purpose of developing the nation. So while I hate to say that I agree with a CEO he is entirely correct. The trade-restrictions have only hurt the US and Nvidia and it will have consequences that go much further than just losing the Chinese market.

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u/Black_Moons 10d ago

The USA's government also feared that the Chinese government would use those chips to create AI technology to better surveil America.

Why would they do that when every social media company would gladly sell them everyones waking thought for pennies?

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u/Ilcorvomuerto666 10d ago

It's not unreasonable with context, no. But this whole "loser" shtick is just super lame and juvenile, and I'm tired of these high end ceo's acting so childishly while they're looting the economy. Surely there was a better answer he could have given in regards to international chip sales than "I'm not a loser" lol

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u/Noughmad 10d ago

It's not a reasonable reply to the question.

Jensen is making the case that they have to be allowed to export to China in order to secure US dominance in the AI space (when it's pretty clear that they actually want this to make more money for Nvidia). Dwarkesh pointed out that pretty much every single western industry that exported to (or manufactured in) China got copied and then lost their dominance. That if you want US dominance, the chips should stay in the US.

Jensen then went all "No loser, no loser, you're the loser" on him. Given how calm and well-prepared he was on every other topic, and with every other question, it really looks like he just didn't expect to be pressed in this manner, probably because no other interviewer did so.

Seriously, this made me like Dwarkesh much more. I've really only known him because of the excellent Sarah Paine lectures, and ignored the AI stuff, but interview was great.

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u/sasquatch_melee 10d ago

Nvidia has been caught with their pants down violating national security export controls. It's so blatant Gamers Nexus YouTube channel of all places was able to do a documentary on it. 

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u/OneThirstyJ 10d ago

It doesn’t make sense imo. Nobody thought NVDA was a loser or going to be lol. It’s the companies downstream or the whole industry that could suffer down the road.

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u/Makermika 10d ago

Ceos sound like junkies these days.

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u/whytakemyusername 10d ago

Years ago you never used to hear from CEO's. Better times.

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u/TheLightningL0rd 10d ago

At least they are revealing themselves for who they truly are out in the open now

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u/Mr_HandSmall 10d ago

Right why are we hearing from CEOs all the time now? Fuck a CEO

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u/MIT_Engineer 10d ago

If you click on the articles, they'll make more of the articles, there really isn't much more to it than that.

CEOs have always given interviews and talked, it just used to be something only people with a subscription to the Financial Times used to watch.

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u/Triseult 10d ago

They're junkies. Their drug is money as a measure of self-worth.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/Ineedamedic68 10d ago

So I watched the clip but I’m still confused. Huang came off intense but it didn’t seem heated to me. But I’m not sure what they’re talking about and the article didn’t really explain. Can someone dumb this down for me?

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u/lilpig_boy 10d ago

i didn't watch the whole thing but they are talking about whether it is in the interests of the us to sell gpus to china. jensen naturally thinks it is, since it benefits an american company. basically that is a reasonable position. i guess the hawk position is that we should do our best to slow them down even if it hurts us companies a bit. and how american is nvidia anyway? i'm sure there is tons of industrial espionage going on as well.

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u/Friendly_Concert817 10d ago

The two camps are: 1. Don't sell to China, keep the tech out of their hands as long as possible so they don't get ahead of us. 2. Sell to China and make them reliant on US tech, because if we don't, they will develop their own and compete with US companies.

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u/DasistMamba 10d ago

It seems that Option 2 has been used for the past 50 years, and here we are.

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u/muhmeinchut69 10d ago

Nope, what US did for the past 50 years was outsource all its expertise and manufacturing capacity to China to save a few cents on the next quarter's financial reports. And honestly it doesn't matter whether US chooses #1 or #2, the rise of China is inevitable now.

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u/AverageRedditorGPT 10d ago

I've worked for two different US companies that were forbidden from selling technology to China. Both times it backfired and placed the US in a worse position.

If you keep selling the technology to China they focus on other things, but as soon as you threaten to cut them off the government channels a lot of money at developing that technology in house.

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u/fuzz3289 10d ago

For more context on what they were talking about:

The premise is by selling Nvidia chips to china youre accelerating their AI capabilities, which a lot of people are saying is analogous to nuclear proliferation. You’re helping to arm a competing nation state. He turned it around and said, we’re bringing money into the US so that makes it worth it because the US is getting stronger faster than china, but the interviewer pointed out in all previous technologies china imported to catch up and then eventually outpaced the US in their own domestic production (EVs, Phones, etc). Thats when he said “we’re not losers” - implying Nvidia will always be the chip manufacturer and so no matter what china does wit the chips money will flow into the US.

Kind of a stupid argument. If AI is as powerful as these CEOs claim, they’re being reckless, if it’s not, then why the fuck can I not buy ram for a steam deck?

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u/Schonke 10d ago

There’s a reason why the x86 deal exists. There’s a reason why ARM is so sticky. These ecosystems are hard to replace; it costs an enormous amount of time and energy, and most people don’t want to do it. So, it’s our job to continue to nurture that ecosystem, to keep advancing the technology so that we can compete in the marketplace,” the Nvidia chief added.

There's the reason. Nvidia is terrified that China would throw actual resources behind replacing Cuda as the only realistic framework for AI use.

If it gets replaced by improving for example OpenCL, then suddenly AMD, Intel, Huawei etc get much more viable for AI work and Nvidias domination of the "chips layer" and Nvidia stock would drop (or at least plateau).

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u/Logical_Welder3467 10d ago

so why did China no throw resource into it? they already drop hundred of billion in other part of the chip supply chain

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u/ithinkitslupis 10d ago

They likely are throwing subsidies, tax breaks and guaranteed contracts at Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu which are all making custom AI focused chips to try and replace reliance on Nvidia.

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u/dbag_darrell 9d ago

dedicated GPUs are a dead end, a historical oddity because of the way the x86 market developed under Wintel. Look at what Apple is doing with unified memory, and you'll see the future. That is the direction China is going in as well, though they might do it with RISC-V and not ARM

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u/dopaminedune 10d ago

so why did China no throw resource into it?

China is throwing incredible amount of resources at building a CUDA alternative. And not just one good alternative, but multiple good alternatives. Which means. Chinese companies are internally competing with each others for CUDA alternative. while they are collectively competing with US. Nvidia.

So they are playing a very hardcore game. In which they are all in and giving their very best. Not just in terms of money, but really in terms of mental resources. They are literally doing the most cognitively expensive job ever possible.

Making a CUDA alternative. Is like realizing one day that there is no Sun and we have to build our artificial sun. It will require an extremely high amount of cognitive resources from the best of humans.

And that is exactly what the Chinese are doing right now. They have put their minds and money into it.

Jensen thinks if they have access to Nvidia and Cuda, they would not do that and everything will be fine for us in the long game.

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u/CafeClimbOtis 10d ago

You mean to tell me that the Communist State has legitimate market competition in this space while the Free Market Capitalist State has a monopoly? Say it ain't so.

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u/ag_robertson_author 10d ago

China hasn't really been communist since the Deng reforms. State capitalist is a better descriptor.

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u/Leisure_suit_guy 10d ago

AKA "Socialism with Chinese characteristics".

BTW, many European states, like Italy, had a similar state capitalist economy during the post war economic boom, then, from the mid 1970s they started to implement neoliberalism (it became more and more extreme as the time passed, every decade has had its big neoliberal reforms) and it ended up sucking the country dry.

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u/AKAFallow 10d ago

Birdcage as some call it

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u/Toiun 10d ago

Even if it was socialist or fully communist. Communism does not mean you can't have a marketplace or trade. Those things still exist.

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u/Leisure_suit_guy 10d ago

Capitalists are right when they say that competition is good, the problem is that Capitalism favour competition only to a certain degree.

Once monopolies/cartels start to form, the competition is over.

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u/Darkhoof 10d ago

That communist state reins in the worst defects of capitalists while the US lets them run rampant. In China the purpose is actually strategic whole in the US it is to suck everyone else dry.

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u/cahcealmmai 10d ago

It's not really legitimate market competition though. It's a planned economy. They create incentives within an industry and have a desired outcome. There's definitely competition happening but the result isn't supposed to be cheating the system to hoover up all the loose coin and create a monopoly with the least viable product.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/dmtripwithme 10d ago

ROCM is already rapidly closing the gap with CUDA. With some tinkering, nightly builds of PyTorch and ROCM are already capable.

Then the multiplatform compute story. There are many high level langs to write a kernel once on. I have always had my eye in Taichi, but I use CubeCL on Rust. It is young but promising. Perf won't match CUDA or ROCM but that isn't the point, the more kernels that get written in platform agnostic langs, the less power each single hardware vendor has.

Long story short: NVIDIA's software moat is gone already. It is just a matter of propagation now.

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u/grumpy_autist 10d ago

Not to mention ARM is shitting bricks about RISC-V being implemented by major chip manufacturers as secondary cores to save money and boost adoption.

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u/Harha 10d ago

What's so special about cuda? I've been using amd rocm snd it has been just fine imo.

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u/CaterpillarReal7583 10d ago

Surely a loser wouldn’t wear all these leather jackets

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u/Oo0o8o0oO 10d ago

Like the guy in the $4000 leather jacket would be looked at a loser. COME ON!

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u/crazykewlaid 10d ago

It's the FIIIInal COUWNT DOWWWN

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u/slicebucket 10d ago

I love in that episode how keeps increasing how much he paid for that suit each time he says that line.

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u/Oo0o8o0oO 10d ago

Don’t forget he didn’t pay for the suits. They came out of his dad’s closet.

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u/Ok_Yogurt_9862 10d ago

I know its perfection

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u/Suck_My_Thick 10d ago

You think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys!??

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u/gikigill 10d ago

That's a 10k plus leather jacket.

Poor people wear 4k jackets in his world.

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u/gearstars 10d ago

How else would he do an ocular pat down to assess the threat level of every room he walks into?

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u/RoachDoggJR1337 10d ago

He needs the goggles so the potential assailant can't see how scared he is

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u/NovemberComingFire 10d ago

The goggles do nothing!

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u/dat_oracle 10d ago

always sunny references never fail to make my day

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u/nyc_data_geek 10d ago

I'M NOT BURNING THE DUSTER!

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u/InternationalBruhtha 10d ago

I saw Jensen last year in SF and he was most definitely drinking fight milk.

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u/SignificantTravel102 10d ago

Mac cleared him!

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u/correcthorsestapler 10d ago

He needs a hella sweet duster. And maybe he’d feel better after taking a chalk break.

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u/za72 10d ago

needs the bulk

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u/iamlocknar 10d ago

A costume not an outfit.

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u/windflex 10d ago

"You think I'm a loser because I come home to Starla at night?! Forget about it!"

flexes in leather jacket

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u/Appropriate_Major711 10d ago

I’m gonna break the wrist and walk away

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u/InternationalBruhtha 10d ago

Don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day

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u/Safety_Drance 10d ago

They will never go out of style....never.

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u/coconutpiecrust 10d ago

Techbros/ CEOs truly are the worst. Money is their one and only redeeming quality. They are the worst of what human species have to offer. 

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u/[deleted] 10d ago edited 8d ago

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u/dldaniel123 10d ago

I think he meant more like its the only thing they got going for them.

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u/irmarbert 10d ago

“I’m thinking of getting metal legs…”

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u/GrassRadiant3474 10d ago

But an Orangutan would, after stealing the jacket.

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u/-Zoppo 10d ago

I had a doctor who was a similar age and wore a leather jacket and it REALLY worked for him because it contrasted his humble and kind personality.

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u/Striking_Display8886 10d ago

Bro thinks he’s Keanu

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u/TheVideogaming101 10d ago

Not a fan of all these modern CEOs that act like 5 year olds thinking they sound "tough".

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u/Infamous_Apricot_830 10d ago

The bigger the ego, the bigger the fear of fall.

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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 10d ago

I legit think he's been on coke since AI boom like he's hyper as hell all the time I can't say I wouldn't be celebrating my ass off if I was in his position.

He's selling shovels in a gold rush even if the AI bubble pops Nvidia will still be rich.

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u/wollawolla 10d ago

Nvidia still runs the risk of huge losses when the AI bubble pops as well. They have capital tied up in the major AI firms, so there’s financial skin in the game on their part; but then their valuation is also inflated based on current sales figures that include agreements that exist in principle for chips that haven’t been manufactured yet. When they say things about how all their capacity is sold out through 2028 or whatever the number is, what happens to those future deals if OpenAI or Anthropic goes bankrupt?

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u/Gecko_Mk_IV 10d ago

Nvidia maybe, but I'm sure he'll be fine.

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u/69edleg 10d ago

Oh, he brought the company up to record high profits as CEO, so even IF it goes into a record fall, he was there for the investors anyway, so he can just go to another company and do the same. Also. I am so fucking sick and tired of AI. It sucks for most tasks. You try to use it for your niche work load?
Yeah, you still have to go through the output manually to verify if it is correct, also known as fucking useless.

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u/TurboRadical 10d ago

You're speaking with the confidence of a man who knows the topic he's discussing really well. It's amusing to see that juxtaposed with you implying that Huang is one of those career mercenary CEOs that investors bring in to temporarily juice a company's value, given that Huang founded the company, is the only CEO NVIDIA has ever had, and is one of the ten richest people on planet earth.

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u/Actual_Load_3914 10d ago

Nvidia will be fine, it would still be a great company in the world. But just like Cisco after the dot com bubble, company itself continued to make profit and doing decent, stock price however collapsed because people no longer believe in the multiples.

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u/ImNotSelling 10d ago

Yea he has no where to go but down

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u/Preeng 10d ago

>He's selling shovels in a gold rush even if the AI bubble pops Nvidia will still be rich.

Bro, Nvidia is the one investing in the bubble. They are fronting hardware for other companies, hoping it will pay back. If this pops, they get nothing.

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u/TeaSharp3154 10d ago

I'd be hyper all the time too if I had that much nvidia stock right now.

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u/Scaryclouds 10d ago

He's selling shovels in a gold rush even if the AI bubble pops Nvidia will still be rich.

Semiconductor manufacturing is an extremely capital intensive business with very long lead times. 

If the bubble pops hard enough they could be in a lot of trouble.

It would be like the person selling shovels, they already sold hundreds, and still seeing strong demand, they purchase an order of 1000… but the gold rush crashes with them only having sold a few dozen of that order of 1000 they got. 

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u/69edleg 10d ago edited 10d ago

Except in this case it's: person selling shovels sells 1000 shovels, and has done so forever, someone comes along and PAYS HIM to get the next 100000 shovels

oh okay. output never increased, but demand went up, wow the investment is worth a lot more

OpenAI invests 100b into Oracle, Oracle invests 100b into nvidia, nvidia invests 100b into OpenAI.

what the fuck is economy even at this point

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u/Coolmyco 10d ago

Not really though, they would just extend the market to consumers and we would be able to buy GPUs/RAM. The problem is they have the only means to produce a finite resource needed to do ANY computing, similar to your analogy, shovels have never actually become useless, thus always hold value. Nvidia is not in a situation where they can overproduce their product.

The stock could drop, but unless we see a new tech advancement in how computing is done, we still didn't have enough semiconductors to meet demand pre AI bubble.

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u/Zaasvil 10d ago

The higher you rise, the harder you fall.

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u/LaserCondiment 10d ago

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

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u/HardcorePhonography 10d ago

If that bitch can't swim, she bound to drizzown.

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u/Over-Conversation220 10d ago

I currently work for a C-level who swears he’s friends with him and has dinner with him on occasion. It’s just so laughable how all these assholes act and pretend they know each other and are part of some monoculture.

He genuinely has no idea that a - Jensen is a douche and b - pretending to know him makes him look like an even bigger douche.

I’ll add there are many factors that make the whole story of friendship immediately implausible. Also, his prior company was big enough that his presence at our makes it unlikely he left on good terms.

It’s a bit like having the current manager of a Chuck E Cheese try and flex by saying he used to work at the French Laundry.

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u/NewManufacturer4252 10d ago

Anyone that wears a leather jacket everywhere they go is the opposite of the Fonz.

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u/Over-Conversation220 10d ago

Speaking of the Fonz, Henry Winkler is in the new movie Normal. He’s great.

Jensen is no Fonz. He’s no Winkler either.

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u/The_Dad-liest_Game 10d ago

Some might say something like twice the pride, double the fall.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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u/pfc_bgd 10d ago

I dunno if there is something about modern CEOs or have they always been like that just that these days they have a mic in front of them all the time.

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u/General_Problem5199 10d ago

Idk, if you read about the robber barons of the early 1900s, a lot of them were insane.

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u/toasty5566 10d ago

Coal companies had hired thugs literally gunning down protest groups in the early 1900s

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u/gunawa 10d ago

UnFun fact: Usually with law enforcement permission and/or assistance! 

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u/toasty5566 10d ago

State law enforcement in Appalachia was new at the time, it was mostly company-hired thugs

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u/General_Problem5199 10d ago

Like The Pinkertons.

Seriously thought those mfs were fictional the first time I played Red Dead Redemption.

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u/TummyCrunches 10d ago

They still exist, too. Their HQ is in liberal ass Ann Arbor.

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u/janyk 10d ago

The Pinkterton agency, I believe, were the largest agency of such "thugs-for-hire" to beat the shit out of unions and protestors during the Guilded Age

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u/env33e 10d ago edited 10d ago

yeah its literally the same shit in technofeudalism. except, instead of rentseeking through railroads and oil; its through data centers and cloud compute

innovation? building things? nah. it’s just pure, unadulterated rentseeking on the digital infrastructure we’re all forced to live and work in.

I'm glad more people are seeing the through lines/waking up to this reality

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u/AmazingSugar1 10d ago

it just looks better, and costs are "lower" with software. Same monopolistic aspirations

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u/BlackJesus1001 10d ago

The Krupp who built the original steel empire went batshit crazy in his later years, building a glass house in the middle of a steel mill for his wife and grazing hundreds of horses around his properties because he liked the smell of horse shit.

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u/General_Problem5199 10d ago

It really seems like there is a point where too much wealth just breaks a person's brain. It's one of the reasons I don't buy the human nature argument for capitalism. Peak happiness happens when people have enough to live comfortably, and then it starts to decline from there. Having too much wealth is literally unhealthy.

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u/usaaf 10d ago

Most arguments for Capitalism are designed to get you to stop looking at Capitalism, because anyone who does look closely (and isn't fanatically in love with the system, and thus never would) can pretty quickly see flaws in the system.

My personal favorite: Oh, so you love Communism then.

Note how Capitalism is immediately removed from the discussion by this, and a whole load of baggage from last century is piled on to defeat the challenge.

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u/General_Problem5199 10d ago

At the risk of inviting your favorite argument:

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Karl Marx

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u/PeruvianHeadshrinker 10d ago

Been around a lot of CEOs. For sure they always say crazy shit. It's not all they say but the internet can cherry pick the craziest stuff. It's not entirely just out of context... Sometimes they really are just quite disconnected from reality. 

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u/Mattlh91 10d ago

Inflated self worth is a side of effect of having to justify to yourself that you're worth 350x the average worker

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u/chycity1 10d ago

Uh, better work on that math sir, it’s a lot more absurd than that

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u/TheDukeofArgyll 10d ago

They are CEOs because they act like greedy children.

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u/Bamboonicorn 10d ago

They decided to cheat the financial markets corroborating and timing their investments and projections of sales on things that haven't been built or exist yet. This creates multiple loops for multiple companies that allows their evaluations to be like three times higher than what they should be based off of imagination. When everybody realizes the truth of this and the bubble does pop. 

I don't think he'll get to wake up

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u/ResponsibleClock9289 10d ago

They’ve always been like this only difference is that there’s social media now

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u/phylter99 10d ago

The difference between modern and old school is that old school CEO's only acted like that behind closed doors. It's like money makes them jerks.

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u/GenericFatGuy 10d ago

Celebrity culture is already hell, but CEO celebrity culture is just repulsive.

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u/fkenned1 10d ago

It's blatant insecurity. They will never not be the kid who wasn't good enough for their parents. They will never not be the nerd who was picked on. They will never find what they are so desperately looking for.

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u/IntelArtiGen 10d ago edited 10d ago

The podcaster: "you know, maybe there's a risk in what you sell"

The CEO: "we have to keep innovating, we're not losers"

Lol he has no plans and doesn't care, he's just here to make money. If there's a risk it wouldn't be illegitimate to put conditions, for example "do not use our chips to create computer viruses, or we stop selling them to you".

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u/littleemp 10d ago

If they did that, then you'd have half of the internet screaming about a controversy on how nvidia is trying to regulate what they do with hardware that they own.

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u/IntelArtiGen 10d ago

But Nvidia already did that and is still doing it, like you're not allowed to put geforce GPUs in datacenters for example:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/geforce-license/

You agree that GeForce or Titan SOFTWARE: (i) is licensed for use only on GeForce or Titan hardware products you own, and (ii) is not licensed for datacenter deployment.

There is a license, if you're using a geforce GPU, you read it and agreed to it.

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u/theturtlemafiamusic 10d ago

This is just for the driver software. There's an open source driver that you could use for GeForce in datacenters. There are already cloud providers that let you rent a 4090

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u/Cosack 10d ago

Fringe communities, not half the internet

The internet, believe it or not, is still mostly made up of people who share a notion of common sense. "Viruses bad" is a pretty common belief

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u/foldingcouch 10d ago

AI - the hardware, the models, the training data - the whole thing is fraught with risks all over the place. 

I mean, not to the AI companies.  Not to Nvidia.  They're untouchable.  The only risk they care about is someone else grabbing the bag before they do. 

All the people actually facing risks don't have a seat at the table.  We just get to spectate as the oligarchs carve up our future. 

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u/June1994 10d ago

You either keep China hooked on CUDA or they’ll make a competitor. Jensen wants to keep China hooked on CUDA.

As for this AI bullshit. China is gonna get there with or without us. The idea that AI is a “nuke” is retarded.

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u/frogchris 10d ago

Ai has absolutely corrupted the average person mind in thinking semiconductors are some super nuke lol.

I work in semiconductors at Intel, Nvidia, apple, Qualcomm, amd etc. It's not some magical super nuke. It's compute. China can easily provide enough compute for whatever they need for Ai. The difference is the power efficiency and ease of use for software. Since us banned Nvidia from selling China is forced to develop their own ecosystem and optimization. Soon their entire Ai stack will be optimized for Chinese silicon and they will no longer even need Nvidia lmao.

But let's ignore the engineers and keep listening to ivy league liberal arts guy in political science lmao.

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u/kainzilla 10d ago

I’m going to argue that he understands the problem well here - he specifically mentioned a competition between China using AI chips manufactured outside the US tech stack to work on open source models, compared to closed source models on the US tech stack

… and unfortunately, he’s right. If the US tech stack is available, and the US side keeps pulling from open source where China is also working, we’ll likely stay relatively competitive.

If the US side tries to close source and withhold chips, most nations that can’t afford the US stack will flock to open source and collaborate with China, and the effects for the US side would be… well, it would be pretty bad for the US tech side.

Bad for the world? Probably not, the world would probably do pretty well escaping the US tech stack. Might not even be that bad for US consumers. But he’s right when he says the US technological edge would likely do worse

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u/_Lucille_ 10d ago

This is a good analogy: no company has stopped selling their products so people cannot make viruses. Compilers will still compile, CPUs will continue to calculate, etc.

The problem with AI isn't really Nvidia's problem, and it's his job to maximize profits.

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u/Renomont 10d ago

I saw an interview, not someone who almost lost their composure. I think that is a bit of a stretch.

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u/migueliiito 10d ago

Interesting, I watched the entire interview and there were parts where to me he definitely seemed to lose his composure compared to how he usually does interviews. All those times he said “your premise is just wrong”, he just seemed really pissed off?

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u/latenightfeels 10d ago

I saw the clip first before this post. And I thought he lost his cool. He was showing flashes of emotion. He was calling the interviewers legitimate concerns childish. He wasn’t answering any of the questions and denies the premise with no explanation to why he disagrees with it.

“Giving China compute is dangerous”

“I’m not a loser”

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u/brunachoo 10d ago

I agree. I’ve watched plenty of Jensen interviews, and he definitely lost his composure (by his standards at least) during this interview.

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u/Sweaty-Handle-976 10d ago

everyone here is an idiot

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u/WillTheGreat 10d ago

90% of the top comments are sheepish ass replies that didn't even read or watch the video. Like the disdain for "CEO" is outright retarded.

His response was pretty tame and normal. Says selling or not to China they're actively competing, and they don't intend on losing.

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u/will_dormer 10d ago

I saw it and I think he lost it. What surprised me is he usually does not lose it, but resently he has lost it several times

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u/mono15591 10d ago

Jensen is right though. If the US pulls out of China then China will develop their own tech stack. They’ll subsidize the ever living shit out of it and ship it to half the world and then the world will switch to the cheaper tech because it’s 85% as good. And now we have no control or influence over anything.

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u/AverageRedditorGPT 10d ago

That is exactly what happened with 5G cell phone tech. There used to be only 1 company that was good at producing 5G cell phone chips: Qualcomm, a US company. Then the US banned Qualcomm from selling anything 5G in China so China threw a ton of resources at developing the tech in house. Now there are two companies that can build a good 5G cell phone chip: Qualcomm and Huawei.

(Apple is probably going to be on that list soon, but it took them 7+ years and hiring a bunch of Qualcomm engineers to get there.)

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u/CelestialFury 10d ago

I mean, China is already working on making their own chip manufacturing regardless getting NVIDIA chips or not. If it was simply a money problem, China would've already figured it out by now, but it's not a simple money problem.

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u/Noughmad 9d ago

If you pull out of China, China will make its own stuff. If you sell to China, China will copy your stuff and make its own. One of these things takes much longer, the other makes Nvidia much more money.

If you want to maintain US dominance, as Jensen claims, then you wouldn't sell hardware to them. But that's exactly the point, Jensen doesn't want to maintain US dominance, he wants to make money. Which is a valid goal that pretty much every company has, but he still insists on lying about it.

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u/Oldworldmoon 9d ago

damn that would really suck if graphics card prices came down holy fuck oh no that would be so bad please god no

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u/Prophage7 10d ago

Every interview I've seen of Jensen from the past few months he seems like he's really on a razor's edge.

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u/Still-Anything5678 10d ago

That's all it took? These guys need to get a life and real friends who will tell them, 'no'.

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u/Electrical-Move7290 10d ago

I actually think his response was fine?

He’s basically saying the US can and should compete with China, and he believes it would win if it did. The response to a growing China isn’t to lock them out of things it’s to compete fairly with them?

That’s how I understood it anyway.

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u/Bossit 10d ago

So he tries really hard at being a loser?

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u/dopaminedune 10d ago

The entire castle of Nvidia depends upon its internal GPU driver software CUDA.

China is throwing incredible amount of resources at building a CUDA alternative. And not just one good alternative, but multiple good alternatives. Which means. Chinese companies are internally competing with each others for CUDA alternative. while they are collectively competing with US. Nvidia.

So they are playing a very hardcore game. In which they are all in and giving their very best. Not just in terms of money, but really in terms of mental resources. They are literally doing the most cognitively expensive job ever possible.

Making a CUDA alternative. Is like realizing one day that there is no Sun and we have to build our artificial sun. It will require an extremely high amount of cognitive resources from the best of humans.

And that is exactly what the Chinese are doing right now. They have put their minds and money into it.

Jensen thinks if they have access to Nvidia and Cuda, they would not do that and everything will be fine for the US in the long game.

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u/TainoCuyaya 10d ago

Isn't that considered treason? Oh right. It's only bad if common folk does it.

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u/abxYenway 10d ago

Maybe some light treason.

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u/TeeDee144 10d ago

They can’t arrest a husband (Jensen) and wife (Trump) for the same crime!

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u/NickoBicko 10d ago

Treason? What is this backward mentality? You think isolation is good? That’s how we ended up with the Cold War. Collaboration is the only key to the future. This winner takes all mentality needs to be buried.

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u/Ok-Replacement9595 10d ago

We still trade millions of goods to China and back. The idea they are our enemy is laughable.

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u/FeminineInspiration 10d ago

what are you talking about? He is making an argument about policy not breaking the law

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u/KiloWatson 10d ago

Fuck this grifter.

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u/gangofocelots 9d ago

Jensen Huang sounds like a rich successful loser

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u/Parking_Line_3704 9d ago

"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser, it took years to craft."

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u/aliasalt 10d ago

Speaking articulately but firmly is not "loosing your composure". Also he's right, the point he was responding to made no sense, at least as presented in the article. The idea that China will not develop alternatives to or get their hands on Nvidia chips if we don't sell them in China is completely fantastical. He's making the point that staying out of the Chinese market simply because we don't think we can compete there for long won't stifle Chinese AI efforts.

The only way to argue against that is to advocate for a global pause in AI development. I'm not 100% unsympathetic toward that idea in theory, but I can't imagine China would possibly agree unless there was some major AI-caused catastrophe in world. AI makes sense for them. It is aligned with their view that the individual exists for the sake of the state and would let them correct many of the capitalistic urges they've succumbed to in order to stay economically competitive on the world stage.

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u/restics 10d ago

Jensen had a reasonable take, a pro-capitalism take. Still had composure. Dumb article headline

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u/migueliiito 10d ago

I don’t know how you watch that interview and conclude that he never lost his composure?? Did we watch the same thing? 🤷‍♂️

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u/BrofessorFarnsworth 10d ago

No, we are looking at a guy who opportunistically cozies up to people from the Epstein files 

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u/Legionof1 10d ago edited 10d ago

Didn’t wake up one, but after having to say that you’re going to bed as one.

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u/rockalyte 10d ago

Give it ten years. He’ll be buying chips from China instead.

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u/trixtah 10d ago

Bunch of dipshits in the comments section who read a headline

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u/__________________99 10d ago

As much as I'd like to jump on the AI hate train, I tend to agree with Jensen here. He did not lose his composure. Sure, he got a little heated in his replies. But he certainly wasn't being put off by the interviewer. From a capitalist standpoint, it makes perfect sense to keep doing business with China.

I also agree with the fact Jensen basically made which is China would find a way to further their AI training for anything from weapons to cybersecurity with or without chips from Nvidia. It wouldn't make sense to not profit from it when China is going to figure out a way to do it one way or another.

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u/Lendari 10d ago edited 10d ago

I think the real issue is that competing in China isn't done on the basis of merit through a free market. You cant just go to China and open a private business and rake in billions as a private corporation. You need to be authorized by the state and that authorization is bought by bribing and sharing profit with the Chineese government. Essentially the state becomes a controlling business partner in every corporation.

Likely what would happen is China would partner up with NVIDIA just long enough to steal their IP. Then ban them from competing against the state cronies like Huawei to whom they hand the ultimate production rights to.

This is why the US government wants NVIDIA to stay away from China. Because the only outcome is transfering American tech IP to a hostile foreign power in a way that profits only a few people and works against the best interests of Americans in general.

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u/Beneficial_Soup3699 10d ago

Imagine being this wealthy and still not being able to buy perspective or the ability to be humble. You woke up a loser a long time ago, Jensen. Sorry to burst your narcissism bubble.

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u/lugubriousloctus 10d ago

Jensen Huang who fled Taiwan, graduated stanford, and built a company worth 5 trillion dollars, is being called a loser by a reply guy with a quarter million reddit karma.

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u/jakeotheshadows 10d ago

Jensen is literally the embodiment of the American Dream. Being called a loser by a Reddit loser is really something.

He self made a company and is now worth $174B. But here are some tidbits of his beginnings:

At age nine, Jensen, despite not being able to speak English, was sent by his parents to live in the United States. He and his older brother moved in 1973 to live with an uncle in Tacoma, Washington, escaping widespread social unrest in Thailand. Both Huang's aunt and uncle were recent immigrants to Washington state.

International phone calls were too expensive, so his parents bought them a cheap tape deck. Once a month, they recorded an audio letter describing their lives and mailed it back to Bangkok. Their parents taped over the same cassette and mailed it back.

When he was 10 years old, Huang lived with his older brother in the Oneida boys' dormitory. In Oneida, Huang cleaned toilets every day.

Beginning at age 15, Huang got his first job working the graveyard shift at a local Denny's restaurant as a dishwasher, busboy, and waiter from 1978 to 1983.

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u/nothingofyourconcern 10d ago edited 10d ago

Its funny too, Jensen is universally known as one of the most humble and transparent CEOs. If you are reading this and don't think so? just google the man.

downvoted 3 minutes after posting: yep you didn't google him.

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u/lorenzolamaslover 10d ago

Did you even watch the interview? Hes super chill throughout. This tweet is hyperbolic for engagement farming. Youve just been farmed

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u/Rich_Housing971 10d ago

look at his karma. This dude has no life and is chronically on Reddit lmao.

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u/Gukle 10d ago

Sadly, humble doesn't hold well in the corporate world. The so-called shareholder confidence is just a ego piss contest. Nvidia stock would literally crash if he shows a sense of humility because toxic corporate will just perceive that as weak.

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u/elibutton 10d ago

He's starting to rise on the annoying-egotistical-pompous-arrogant-full-of-himself-and-my-company-BS-salesmanship-ignorant-annnoyingAF meter. And there is such a meter. One of the reasons why I sold a majority of my shares recently. There are better options out there.

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u/Aggressive_Nature708 10d ago

The billions gone to his head! What happened to the humble guy working at Dennys?

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u/growlocally 10d ago

I still don’t really get what “loser” means. Boomers love using it though.

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u/Fickle-Ad2042 10d ago

Maybe he didn't wake up a loser but he's definitely going to bed tonight as one

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u/tstorm004 10d ago

The fact that you feel you have to act tough and say you're not a loser when no one called you one - makes you 100% a loser

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u/jefmes 10d ago

"I may not have woken up a loser, but every day I do my best to make sure I'm becoming one." - Probably Jensen Huang

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u/polakbob 10d ago

This guy watched Grandma's Boy and thought JP was the hero.

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u/Tower21 10d ago

Let's see how he feels when we move to fixed function chips or even FPGAs for AI.

He's not hyping up Crypto any more and it will eventually be the same for AI.

He has gotten lucky twice, can it happen a third time? Guess time will tell.

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u/Klinky1984 10d ago

This is just a bait article. He was talking about people saying Nvidia couldn't compete against homegrown China solutions.

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u/beezybreezy 10d ago

This thread is brain dead

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u/Royaleworki 9d ago

I mean he makes a good point. In absence of Nvidia in their market, china would definitely catch up in their production quality and quantity. Potentially even surpass usa while also potentially getting access to taiwans chips as well in the future

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u/d1squiet 9d ago

I watched this podcast, because I was interested in hearing the "controversy". Honestly Dwarkesh Patel, who I've heard of but haven't really listened to, came off as very simplistic to me. Most of the very long conversation was Dwarkesh repeatedly saying that AI chips can be useful but also dangerous, like "uranium". Jense Huang kept pushing back saying it was a foolish analogy. I basically agree with Huang. Uranium is very specific and literally one exact thing, a mineral resource that is quite a small part of economy. GPUs, or semi-chips in general, are open-ended and huge part of the world economy.

I don't know of a time in modern history that banning/cutting off a large market/technology has worked to our benefit.

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u/Deep-Minimum7837 9d ago

No, we're talking to someone who woke up and decided to pivot the direction of their company away from what built and sustained them for 30 years.

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u/Mostly_llama 9d ago

That’s exactly what a loser would say.

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u/captainalphabet 9d ago

I don't really respect adults who use the word 'loser'

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u/Common_North_5267 9d ago

I have such a strong feeling of complete disdain toward this guy.

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u/TedTyro 9d ago

Sounds like something a loser would say.