As the global race for artificial intelligence dominance heats up, Nvidia’s boss is urging Washington to play a smarter, longer game.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the US can stay ahead in AI, but only if it avoids cutting itself off from China’s massive pool of developers and technology users. Speaking at the company’s conference in Washington this week, Huang emphasized that the US needs to maintain engagement with China while protecting its national interests.

“A policy that causes America to lose half of the world’s developers is not beneficial long-term,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “Keeping US technology in front requires finesse. It requires balance. It requires long-term thinking.”

The Nvidia chief has repeatedly argued that the US risks weakening its own tech ecosystem if Chinese developers are pushed toward homegrown platforms. He reiterated that point at the company’s event, where he said, per Reuters: “We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that… But we also need to be in China to win their developers.”

Huang warned that shutting out China completely could backfire, harming US innovation and pushing Beijing to accelerate its own chip-manufacturing ambitions.

China’s market: once 95%, now zero

Nvidia once commanded the vast majority of the AI chip market in China, but that is no longer the case. Huang noted that the company has gone from a 95% peak market share in China to zero, as export restrictions and shifts in Chinese policy disrupted its business.

He said that, while the US government has allowed Nvidia to ship certain chips to China, Beijing has discouraged companies from buying them. “They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now,” Huang said, as reported by Bloomberg.

Still, Chinese firms remain interested in Nvidia’s cutting-edge processors and software ecosystem.

The Blackwell question and presidential talk

The geopolitical tension was thrust into the spotlight when US President Donald Trump spoke ahead of his meeting with President Xi Jinping.

Trump initially fueled investor hope by saying he would discuss Nvidia’s latest, “super duper” Blackwell AI processors with his Chinese counterpart. The comments helped push Nvidia’s stock to a new high, briefly making it the first company to be valued at over $5 trillion.

However, after meeting with Mr Xi in South Korea, Trump later clarified today that while chips in general were discussed, the highly restricted Blackwell accelerators were not on the table. Instead, he said the US role was to be an “arbitrator or the referee,” leaving China to speak directly with Nvidia about buying less-advanced chips.

Just this week, Nvidia made history by becoming the first company ever to surpass a $5 trillion market capitalization.