During an interview with Axios, Huang downplayed fears regarding open-source AI models from China, instead saying that the concern should be regarding the campaign to ban them.

  • Huang voiced his opinion against banning or restricting access to AI models, both from the U.S. as well as China.
  • The Nvidia CEO also dismissed the concerns around China gaining ground or soaring past the U.S. in the AI sector, saying that it is not a race with a specific endpoint.
  • The Nvidia CEO also believes that the markets and Washington have both misunderstood the Kimi shock, repeating a similar pattern observed when DeepSeek was launched in January 2025.

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday broke away from Trump administration officials’ increasingly hardline stance against Chinese AI models, saying that American companies should “absolutely” use them.

During an interview with Axios, Huang downplayed fears regarding open-source AI models from China, instead saying that the concern should be regarding the campaign to ban them.

“There's no scenario where China runs U.S. companies off the road. Zero possibility,” he said.

Nvidia shares were down 1% in Wednesday’s pre-market trade.

Huang Pushes Back On AI Distillation Concerns

Huang also downplayed concerns about intellectual property theft or AI distillation.

“Distillation, learning from AI, learning from other sources of knowledge, is fundamental to intelligence,” he said, but added that companies should still be held accountable for violating contracts or user privacy.

Huang’s comments come amid U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threat of sanctioning AI model developers if they are found to be guilty of stealing IP from American companies.

“If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft,” he said on Tuesday. Bessent also said that the U.S. government is finding the watermarks of large language models built in the United States on many AI models coming out of China.

Huang dismissed the concerns around China gaining ground or soaring past the U.S. in the AI sector, saying that it is not a race with a specific endpoint. “We're going to continue to use AI forever. The United States is going to be here for a long time. China's going to be here for a long time,” he said.

‘Let Anthropic Run,’ Says Huang

Huang also voiced his opposition to banning or restricting access to AI models in both the U.S. and China. He called for Anthropic’s Claude Mythos to be made available to everyone, instead of providing a limited set of U.S. companies with access to the cybersecurity model.

“Mythos should be available as a service. Remember: Just because Mythos is not available, open models are available anyhow. So I think: Let Anthropic run,” he said.

Huang added that holding back Anthropic is not in the U.S.'s interest. He also dismissed concerns about backdoors in Chinese AI models, saying these models can be customized and their access secured through sandboxes.

“If everything just becomes one single model, one single point of attack, one single source of failure, I think the world is much, much more vulnerable,” he said.

Huang Believes That Markets And Washington Misunderstood The Kimi Shock

The Nvidia CEO also believes that the markets and Washington have both misunderstood the Kimi shock, repeating a pattern similar to that observed when DeepSeek launched its open-weight model in January 2025, which disrupted the AI sector.

“Free AI should be great for hardware. Free AI should be great for chips. Free AI should be great for data centers,” he said.

Huang argued that cheaper and open AI models will bring the technology to more people and businesses, which will subsequently increase the demand for chips that Nvidia sells, as well as the computing and data center infrastructure that other companies offer.

NVDA stock is up 11% year-to-date and 21% over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is up 19% over the past 12 months, while the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) is up 26%.

The Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ) is up 37% during this period, while the iShares U.S. Technology ETF (IYW) is up 36%.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<