WASHINGTON, Nov. 6: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned that China is poised to surpass the United States in the artificial intelligence (AI) race, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

“China is going to win the AI race,” Huang told the newspaper on the sidelines of the Financial Times’ Future of AI Summit.

Huang emphasized that China is only “nanoseconds behind America in AI” and stressed the importance of the U.S. maintaining its lead by attracting developers worldwide. “It’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide,” he said in a statement posted on X on Wednesday.

Speaking in October, Huang said the U.S. can maintain an advantage in AI if the global developer community, including China’s vast base, uses Nvidia systems. However, he noted that the Chinese government has blocked the company from its market.

China’s access to advanced AI chips, particularly Nvidia’s, remains a central issue in the ongoing tech rivalry with the United States, as both nations compete for dominance in cutting-edge computing and artificial intelligence.

“We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that,” Huang said at Nvidia’s developers’ conference in Washington last month. “We want the world to be built on the American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world’s AI developers is not beneficial in the long term; it hurts us more,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently stated in an interview that Nvidia’s most advanced Blackwell chips should be reserved exclusively for American customers. Huang previously said Nvidia has not applied for U.S. export licenses to sell the chips in China, citing Beijing’s restrictive stance toward the company.

Trump added that Washington would permit some engagement with Nvidia in China, “but not in terms of the most advanced” semiconductors.