Trump met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on export controls, source says

By Jeff Mason and Stephen Nellis

December 3 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump met with Jensen Huang, CEO of chip giant Nvidia (NVDA), on Wednesday to discuss export controls, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. He was meeting with lawmakers in the US capital and told them that state-by-state US regulations would slow the progress of AI development, Huang told CNBC.

Nvidia had also opposed a separate bill that would have required it to offer to sell its chips to U.S. customers before obtaining a license to sell them to “relevant countries.” Nvidia argued that the bill would restrict global competition in artificial intelligence markets.

Earlier in the day, podcaster Joe Rogan released a nearly three-hour interview with Huang; In this interview, the CEO of the world’s most valuable company praised Trump and said he was in regular contact with administration officials.

“Every time I call, if I need something, I want to clear up something I feel like, I want to voice my concerns, they are always available,” Huang said on the podcast.

Huang also told Rogan that it is in the US’s national security interests to develop AI before other countries, but there may not be an obvious turning point where any country will win the race.

“I think it will probably be a lot more gradual than we thought,” Huang said. “It’s not going to happen for a moment. It’s not going to be like someone came and nobody else came… I think it’s going to happen, just like technology does, things are going to get better and better and better.”

Huang will also make remarks on Wednesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington, Stephen ‌Nellis in San Francisco and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by ‌Alan Barona, Deepa Babington and Diane Craft)