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

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By Jeff Mason and Stephen Nellis

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

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Huang was in the U.S. capital meeting with lawmakers, where he told them that state-by-state U.S. regulations would slow the progress of AI development, he told CNBC.

Nvidia had also opposed a separate proposed piece of legislation that would have required it to offer to sell its chips to U.S. customers before obtaining licenses to sell those chips to “countries of concern.” Nvidia had argued the bill would restrict global competition in AI markets.

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

“Every single time I called, if I needed something, I want(ed) to get something off my chest, express some concern, they’re always available,” Huang said on the podcast. 

Huang also told Rogan that while it was in U.S. national security interests to develop AI before other countries, there may be no obvious inflection point at which any single country wins the race.

“I think it’s probably going to be much more gradual than we think,” Huang said. “It won’t be a moment. It won’t be as if somebody arrived and nobody else has … I think it’s going to be, things that just get better and better and better and better, just like technology does.”

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

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