Nvidia CEO: DeepSeek on Huawei Chips Would Be 'Horrible' for US — Calls for Chip Sales to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made two seemingly contradictory but strategically coherent statements on April 17: he warned it would be 'horrible' for the United States if DeepSeek AI models ran on Huawei chips — while simultaneously calling on the US government to allow chip sales to China. Huang argued that if China's AI market runs on American platforms, it is far preferable to China developing its own ecosystem. With Nvidia facing approximately $4.5 billion in inventory charges from H20 export restrictions and $8 billion in additional expected revenue losses, Huang framed chip sales to China as both commercially and strategically rational: 'One of the world's largest AI markets will either run on American platforms or Chinese ones. We should ensure it runs on American ones.' The statements came as DeepSeek V4, expected in late April, is set to launch exclusively on Huawei's Ascend 950PR chips — potentially validating China's domestic AI compute stack and making Huang's warning concrete.