Jensen Huang attends a reception for the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, at St James' Palace in London, Brirain, Nov. 5, 2025.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly told the Financial Times on Wednesday that "China is going to win the AI race," only to release a notably softer statement soon after.
The prolific tech leader was speaking on the sidelines of the FT's Future of AI Summit, where he warned that China would beat the U.S. in artificial intelligence thanks to lower energy costs and looser regulations.
The comments, which CNBC could not verify independently, would represent Huang's starkest warning yet that the U.S. is at risk of losing its global lead in advanced AI technologies.
However, several hours after the FT published its report, Nvidia issued a separate statement from Jensen on an official X account.
"As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI. It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide," he added.
Huang has long stated that the U.S. can stay ahead in the AI race if it keeps developers reliant on Nvidia's leading AI chips — an argument the CEO has used to lobby against export restrictions on his company's sales to China.
Following meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump in July, it seemed that Huang's efforts had paid off, with Washington agreeing to ease some of its chip curbs.
Under the plan, Nvidia and competing AI chip company AMD had agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of their Chinese revenues from sales of existing AI processors tailored for the market.
However, Beijing has since shut Nvidia out of the market as it conducts a national security review of its chips, with Huang stating that the firm's market share has been reduced to zero.
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