Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of U.S. technology giant Nvidia, praised China's continuous innovation in the field of AI in an exclusive interview with the China Central Television (CCTV) on Wednesday, highlighting the pioneering efforts of Chinese AI company DeepSeek.
As the global interest in AI intensifies, Huang emphasized that the pace of innovation in China cannot be halted, and that the country's engineering community possesses the ingenuity and adaptability to overcome challenges in the AI technological chain.
"There is no way to stop the pace of domestic innovation. Of course, I believe that Nvidia can make a great contribution. AI is a very complicated stack. It's a very complicated stack of cake. Underneath are chips, then there are systems, networking technology, AI infrastructure, software, AI algorithm, and then the applications and services on top. That entire stack is extraordinarily complex, On the one hand, it requires all of the innovation across that stack to advance AI. But If each layer is not moving as fast, the engineers are so smart to innovate at the layer above or below to make up for, and the entire stack moves forward," said the Nvidia CEO.
Huang singled out DeepSeek as a standout example of China's AI innovation capacity. He noted that the company's R1 model had demonstrated groundbreaking achievements by optimizing the structure of AI systems to leverage the performance of the H20 architecture, despite hardware constraints.
"That's one of the reasons why you have to admire the incredible innovation of a company called DeepSeek. Their model called R1 is genuinely innovative. It re-architected many of the ways that the AI models operate so that it can take advantage of the H20 architecture. That's a very innovative thing. As a result, they achieved world class results even though they were built on H20s. So, researchers and developers, they could adjust to each one of the layers," said Huang.
DeepSeek's achievement reflects a broader pattern of independent innovation across China's AI industry, which continues to make strides in both foundational technology and real-world application.
Analysts note that such breakthroughs not only underscore China's growing leadership in AI, but also showcase its capacity to excel even under adverse conditions.
Nvidia has recently secured U.S. government's approval to resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to the Chinese market.
Huang concluded by reiterating his confidence in China's innovation ecosystem and its ability to adapt to available tools and infrastructure.
"I have a lot of optimism and confidence in the innovation capabilities of China to adapt to whatever resources they have. Now remember, H20, although it isn't the most advanced that Nvidia provides, is still extraordinary in terms of capability. It is the architecture that defined that created if you will the AI revolution, and so today it is still extraordinarily good," said Huang.
Nvidia CEO hails DeepSeek's world-class innovation
