Jensen Huang says the US needs to win a key people battle with China

Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has a message for the US: To lead in AI, you need to win over the world's developers, starting with the ones in China.

The tech titan said on an episode of "Memos to the President" published Monday that leadership in AI isn't just about hardware or regulation — it's about people. And right now, many of them are outside America's reach.

"50% of the world's AI developers are in China," he said. "The first job of any platform is to win all developers." Huang said that developers now come from everywhere — Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East — as demand for AI spreads across every country, industry, and company. Huang said the US must ensure developers around the world are building on the "American tech stack," from chips to infrastructure to cloud platforms.

"The American tech stack should be the global standard," he said. "Just as the American dollar is the global standard."

Huang said that Washington needs to stop restricting access and start focusing on expanding influence.

"The more your technology is everywhere, the more developers you're going to have," he added.

Huang's comments come just before Nvidia announced that it will resume selling its H20 chips to China. The company said in a statement on Tuesday that the US government has "assured Nvidia that licences will be granted," with deliveries expected to begin soon.

The move marks a reversal from the Trump administration's earlier crackdown on advanced chip exports to China. In April, Nvidia warned that the restrictions could cost it billions in lost revenue.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.

Competition with China is 'intense'
Huang has been outspoken about the strength of China's AI industry.

In an interview earlier this year with Ben Thompson, the author of Stratechery, Huang said that China is doing "fantastic" in the AI market, with homegrown models like DeepSeek and Manus emerging as credible challengers to US-built systems.

He also said China's AI researchers are some of the very best in the world, and it's no surprise that US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring them.

"Our competition in China is really intense," Huang said in May at the Computex Taipei tech conference in Taiwan.

While China races ahead, Huang has been critical of Washington's response. He said in Taiwan that US chip export controls — aimed at slowing China's AI progress — have backfired.

"The export control gave them the spirit, the energy, and the government support to accelerate their development. So I think, all in all, the export control is a failure," he said.