I'm Mike Allen with Behind the Curtain today from Fort Worth, Texas,

where we're talking to Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA,

the most valuable company in the world about what's next for the

AI revolution.

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO from day

zero of NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world.

Thanks for sitting down with Axios Behind the Curtain.

I'm delighted to do it, Mike. Great to see you.

Axios always starts with the news.

The Financial Times says Chinese regulators are looking at export controls,

tightening their controls

on AI models and semi-conductors to keep them away from the West.

Do you think that will happen and what would the net effect on the US be?

I hope not. The Chinese market, the Chinese.

industry creates some

really great AI models and AI technology.

I've said before that half of the world's AI researchers are Chinese.

Many of them still live in China,

and they produce some really groundbreaking research in AI.

And the United States does, too, and many places around the world does.

And and we want to make sure that we can all share ideas

as broadly as quickly as possible so that we can advance this incredible

technology in a way that's beneficial to society, safely,

so on.

And so I hope, I hope that they continue to keep it open.

You were just in China a couple of months ago.

Do you think they will? What's the likelihood?

I don't know, I don't know.

I don't know the source of that news.

And there's of course all kinds of regulation being discussed.

And export control is being discussed on both sides of the ocean.

And, and, you know, once one side decides

to exercise export controls, everybody decides to think about export controls.

I think we all have to de-escalate and let the technology advance. And,

you know,

the companies in the United States are very, very capable.

We're able to move very quickly.

I have every confidence that United States will continue to lead.

And so long as as long as we have the support

and the encouragement of governments, we should be able to continue to do so.

Flip side.

Should the government ban or restrict Kimi or other Chinese models?

I hope not, and I really don't think so.

The United States,

the world needs open and closed models.

We should use closed models because they're great to use.

They work incredibly well.

Anthropic and OpenAI.

These are incredibly great services.

We should use closed models as much as we can, rent everything we can.

However, the industry still needs open models, science use needs open model.

Cybersecurity needs open model because it's safe.

It's important for cybersecurity, important for national security.

It's important for economic security.

And so companies need to be able to control some of the IP

and some of the data that they have so that they could advance the AI models in

a controlled way.

Cybersecurity with the benefit of transparency,

the ability for the entire community to inspect

and test to make sure that we harden it in the best possible way –

it's best for cybersecurity.

And so depending of irrespective of how many industries,

open models is foundational to the advance of science and the

advancement of computer science today, I really do hope that we keep it open.

Simple question on the front page of the Wall Street Journal:

Should American companies be allowed to use Chinese AI models?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

There's a there's a misconception that somehow

there are back doors that is somehow connected to China in some way.

You download the models, you could you could finetune it,

you can enhance it, you can guardrail it as you desire.

And so these models don't just operate.

They operate within what is called a harness.

And that harness sits within what is called essentially a sandbox.

These sandboxes are secure.

These sandboxes keeps,

you know, keeps privacy and security

and access control and and so all of that capabilities put into the sandbox.

So I think the these models are are

capable models,

excellent models, advances the whole industry and advance.

And we want AI to diffuse into the market as quickly as possible.

And so open models allows for that.

Can intervention by the government ever be a good thing?

Of course, regulation is a good thing in many different industries,

and you want to regulate applications.

You have to be mindful to regulate technology.

The raw technology itself is dual use.

And so we want to make sure that you regulate how it's used.

Maybe you want to you want to regulate the service itself.

Maybe you'll regulate how it's used in medicine, how it's used in transportation.

You should regulate how AI is used in autonomous vehicles.

And so all these different applications of AI should be regulated.

However, the technology itself ought to be able to advance as quickly as possible.

Now you've said China is an adversary in AI.

What should the rules of engagement be for the US with an AI adversary?

Well, the first thing is to recognize that AI has dual use,

and we want to advance it as quickly as possible

because the technology, when it's advanced is more safe.

It's more secure because it works better.

However, we want to make sure that the the researchers

in all of these, in all the countries are able to, to dialog,

cooperate whenever possible so that we can advance the technology

safely. I think an open dialogue

is really important, and that should be foundational.

Your stock price depends partly on sales to China.

Why should we trust what you say about China and the market?

Well, we should start with the fact that our China sales

is approximately zero today.

And and I've told all of our investors not to expect

any China sales. If,

if both the United States and,

and United States has already already licensed it,

if the Chinese government

and the Chinese market would like us to return, it would be

it would be a great, great honor to be able to support the customers

and the market.

And good for business. And great for business.

But until then, I would just assume that the sales is zero.

That's Kimi policy.

Now Kimi the very powerful Chinese model that really rattled

the stock market.

Microsoft is using and testing Kimi.

The information says Chinese models may even replace some of

Microsoft's use of OpenAI, Anthropic.

And so this Chinese competition is coming fast and furious.

What should US AI companies do?

These Chinese models are excellent. Open,

open source models that are excellent should be used.

And so the market’s misunderstood

the impact of DeepSeek the first time.

It's misunderstood. Another Chinese model. Yeah it's misunderstood the impact of Kimi again

this time. I think first of all with great

AI open models, it's great for the whole industry.

Obviously when there's more, If there's great AI,

even if it's open, wherever it comes from, there will be more use.

Whenever there's more use, you'll have to sell a lot more Nvidia computers.

We'll have to build more data centers, we’ll have more services.

The technology will diffuse into more industries.

And so starting point is great

models lead to great use, which leads to great growth.

And so that's just the starting point that happened with DeepSeek.

It's going to happen with Kimi.

There's also a misunderstanding that open models

could be adversarial to the closed models.

And that's also got it wrong.

And the reason for that is because the the most likely person to upgrade

to a great model like Anthropic and OpenAI

is someone who already uses AI,

and they would like to have it more conveniently, maybe they'd like

to have more services come along with with Anthropic and OpenAI.

Maybe.

Maybe the models are just so much better, which I expect it to be.

And so I think that the thing that we want to do

is make sure that we have AI technology to fuse into the industries as quickly

as possible, have as many people use it as quickly as possible.

And so open models, extremely cheap

models, easy on ramps to try AI.

That's the best thing we could.

Do now in NVIDIA has its own open source model, Nemotron.

When we were making up, you were telling me it's at the frontier,

not the frontier.

Will it become the dominant US open-source model?

We built it so that companies and industries

who for sovereignty reasons, regulatory reasons, privacy reasons,

very specific domain, intellectual properties

reasons would like to build their own AI.

I advise all of my customers to use

OpenAI and Anthropic, and use open, close models and services

as much as they can because it's easy, it works incredibly well, and I use it.

I use Perplexity and Anthropic and OpenAI and

and use these services as much as you can.

You only build your own AI if you must.

And it turns out a lot of companies, whether it's financial services

or cybersecurity companies, companies like ourselves, we must build our own AI.

And so Nemotron is built for companies who need to do that.

We don't have to be the frontier.

We have to be at the frontier.

And how quickly could you push out the big boys

or compete with the big boys at the frontier?

That's not our goal, you know, our goal is our goal is

is simply if you need to build your own custom models and custom AI,

we could be of service to you to help you do that. With the right harness,

these harnesses are for example, Open Claw or Hermes or Cloud Code

for example, is a harness around the Opus AI models.

And so the large language model is the brain. The harness,

if you will, turns it into an agent and into a thinking working

agent that can help you do things.

And so with the right harness, Nvidia's Nemotron is extraordinarily good,

and you could adapt it, customize it for the certain skills

that you have in mind, and it can be completely world-class.

What are the economics for the proprietary labs?

If open source models, not just Chinese ones, can produce tokens,

the intelligence, cheaper? Fantastic.

Really,

really.

what the what the world needs is more people who needs AI.

And the only way that you need AI

is because you tried it and you realize you want better ones.

And these free services and build it yourself

AIs is not for everybody, you know.

However, once you tried it once and you realize it's so clumsy, it's so much work.

So you're saying if I'm OpenAI or Anthropic,

I should not be afraid of open model? Not at all.

Not at all.

I think that that what we need, what they need more

than anything, is just for the whole world to realize they need AI.

And the way that people want to have better AI is

they tried AI today, and they just realize

it would be nice for somebody else to help me service.

It's no different than cloud services.

It's no different than search.

It's no different than databases in the cloud.

You know that we could run our own search, but what a hassle is it?

We can in fact build our own computers.

Why don't we just use it in the cloud?

There are a lot of things we could do that's more cost effective,

but it's in fact more convenient to use it when it's in Anthropic and OpenAI.

I would also argue that for a lot of people and for a lot of companies,

even if the model is free, it'll still cost you more

to operate it yourself.

You might as well have somebody else do it for you.

And so I think whether it's whether it's just

more accessible, it's going to be better.

You know, however you think about these closed

models, I think they're going to be thriving for years to come.

What's your vision for the future

with open source and proprietary models competing with each other?

The world is going to have closed and open models.

We should use closed models as often as we can, and we should customize and use

open models to build our own personal, our own customized AI, if we must.

And now, of course, the world is large,

and for many countries and companies, they must build their own intelligence.

They can't outsource their fundamental intelligence to a third party.

And so I think you should you should apply and adopt

and rent intelligence from cloud services wherever you can.

However, you can't outsource your own intelligence.

You should build your own custom AI.

The Palantir CEO went viral for his interview,

warning about giving up your alpha, your intellectual property

to the frontier labs. You're in a unique position.

You both use the frontier labs and you supply them.

You use them for your own chip design,

to your most important customers.

Do you worry about giving away your alpha, your IP, to an AI

that may be using it to do their own optimized chip design?

Nobody should outsource their alpha.

Nobody should outsource their intelligence.

No country should.

We should always import and rent services wherever we can.

However. How do you protect it and where are you most vulnerable?

Well, in the areas that are, that are domain specific, proprietary,

maybe sovereign,

maybe secret, maybe regulated,

I need to do it myself.

A company or a country need to do it themselves.

However, there's a whole lot of things that we do that are not related to that.

Maybe it's related to

automating marketing, or maybe it's really automating our legal department.

And in all of those different many use cases around the company,

it's really about enhancing the productivity

of the core company itself.

It's not specific domain or intellectual property to the company.

In those cases, I would outsource as much as we can.

Thank you so much for watching Behind The Curtain.

We'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, Accenture.

I'm very excited about our reinvention story today,

which is literally 160 years in the making.

Their invention was trying to bring a company into the trends of the future.

What's the scariest or most

awe-inspiring thing that you personally have seen AI do?

Where you said, shit, I can't believe this is happening?

Well,

I expect it to do almost everything that tasks that we can do.

You know, it's not, it wasn't

it wasn't a far reach to imagine that

AI can generate videos that are photorealistic and so lifelike.

It isn't so beyond imagination that AI can generate text,

and from that it can reason. From that,

it can essentially write code.

And and so the things that the things that AI is

doing is fairly consistent

with what I expect it to be able to do. That it could drive cars, that it could

move around and manipulate things, pick up things,

and essentially manufacture these computers autonomously.

And all of those capabilities I've, I've largely imagined, I think the

part that the, the market,

the industry, society needs to realize

is that while we're automating all of these different tasks,

it's actually increasing the amount of jobs that the world needs.

And it's very sensible to me.

You know, while people have said that AI is going to eliminate jobs,

that is going to make it so that we don't have to work at all,

it's exactly the opposite.

And the reason for that is,

and I'll just first of all, give you the evidence, the number of radiologists

in the world is increasing substantially, some 20%, I understand.

And the reason for that is because the studying of the radiology

scans has become completely automated by AI,

but as a result, they could see a lot more patients.

And because there are so many people who needs care,

the number of patients they can now bring to the hospitals

has increased dramatically, which results in having, needing more radiologists.

This is the same with paralegals.

Apparently the number of paralegals is increased by some 10%.

And the reason for that is while they're using AI,

the number of cases they could see has increased.

And there's just so many cases backlogged that

now they need a lot more radiologists,

a lot more paralegals to be able to see all these different clients.

This is happening all over.

The number of manufacturing jobs has increased some 50%

in the last several years,

because these computers have to go into these AI data centers,

which generate the tokens, the intelligence, and the, because that is

in such great demand, the number of manufacturing jobs has gone up.

And so when you think about

AI across the whole industry, jobs are being created everywhere.

So one more on what blew your hair back.

We know that Anthropic’s

Mythos can break into a bank or can break into an intelligence agency.

What has surprised you or what's coming that gives you pause?

Well it's surprises,

it surprised me that people were surprised.

The fact that an agent can

generate code is because it can understand software, it could debug software,

and if it can debug software, it could find vulnerabilities in software.

And so cybersecurity and finding bugs is not is not a, you know,

it's not an inconsistent idea.

And so the fact that AI can generate

and debug software suggests it could also be used for cybersecurity.

The flip side of it is equally true.

We need to make sure that open models are in hand,

in the hands of cybersecurity experts around the world.

So open models is enhances cybersecurity, open models enhances safety.

And the reason for that is because we want massively distributed,

self diverse defense.

We want to put open models

in the hands of cybersecurity experts all over the world,

so that they could defend themselves so that they could look for vulnerability.

They could share ideas among communities.

If everything just becomes one single model, one single point of attack,

one single source of failure, I think the the world is much, much more vulnerable.

And so the thinking that somehow we have to close models

so that the world could be more safe is exactly the opposite.

We have to open the models so that the world can have self

cybersecurity defense.

It age 30, 33 years ago you started Nvidia,

which then was a company to bring 3D graphics to video gaming.

You've been CEO since day one.

You now have the world's most valuable company.

It turned out the same technology

that could be used in video game cards is used in AI chips.

You were worth $1 trillion three years ago.

Now, Nvidia’s worth five x that $5

trillion, could a success story like that ever be done again?

Or are you a unicorn’s unicorn?

Anything's possible in the United States.

You know, there's a reason why it's called the American Dream.

If you're willing to work hard, if you're willing, if you want to

take chances and go do something, something unique,

the environment, the conditions,

the support, the people, the brilliance that's all around us makes it possible.

And I think this is this is the land of dreams.

This is almost anything’s possible.

Yeah. May make it more possible.

Like I always tell my

nieces and nephews, like great fortunes are going to be created on a laptop.

All completely true.

The number of startups

that are being created today is growing extraordinarily fast.

In the last six months, $300 billion

has been invested into venture capital, into startups.

Just here in the United States, $300 billion.

All of that is creating new jobs, new companies.

It's incredible.

Now, Nvidia's facing the toughest headwinds

since the Great Recession close to 20 years ago.

You had a market rout, China rising, the US government looking to be more

restrictive, bringing your engineer’s mind to the job of the CEO.

How do you navigate all that?

Well, the world is changing every day and you just got to stay alert.

But I have every confidence that Nvidia

and the United States are going to continue to thrive.

You know, the confidence comes from not hope,

but confidence comes from the fact that you're surrounded by amazing people.

The country fundamentally wants to succeed,

and it creates the conditions for entrepreneurs and innovators

to do great work.

And we're surrounded by amazing brilliance.

We have incredible local market.

We have just, you know, all the recipes, all the ingredients

necessary for long-term success.

And and so I'm as bullish as ever, as confident as ever.

The United States was supposed to be six months ahead of China in AI.

Not much margin for error.

Now, the tech world has been rocked by Chinese models that rival

OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

Has China caught up?

Whether China has or not,

I don't think it matters. And let me tell you why.

I think, first of all, the idea that it's a race with an endpoint,

obviously we're going to continue to use AI forever.

The United States is going to be here for a long time.

China is going to be here for a long time.

We have to recognize that China has some of the largest population

of science and math students in the world.

If they manufacture anything that's incredible,

they manufacture math students incredibly.

And so so they, they manufacture more

AI researchers than the rest of the world combined.

So it's the fact.

So the fact that China

is going to be extraordinary at this is a foregone conclusion.

And the idea that we would hold China back is ill-conceived

and it's not going to happen,

nor are they going to hold United States back.

You know, this is an incredibly innovative country.

We have brilliant minds from all over the world.

They come here because of the American Dream. Immigrants,

American-born, you name it.

I mean, we have great universities.

We have great industry.

And so I have every confidence that United States will continue to thrive.

The most important thing that we have to do with AI is not to scare

our industries, not to scare our society

into not using AI.

AI is not going to

destroy all of our jobs.

Someone who uses AI is going to take our jobs,

and so we have to make sure that we adopt AI, diffuse

AI into the industries as quickly as possible.

Anything we do that limits that, anything that we do

that prevents that from happening, whether it's because we scare people,

we talk all day about the doom, the dooms of AI,

I think all of that is just ill-placed and it's not helpful to the United States.

And so, so long as our industries take advantage of AI,

we're going to do incredibly well. On the doom,

did some of your fellow moguls over

index on warning people talking about what could come?

I think it's fine to warn people.

It's even better to warn people with a solution,

and it's absolutely inappropriate to make things up.

And so the fact that this is going to be the end of humanity,

it’s complete nonsense.

The fact that this is

this is going to destroy half of the American jobs.

It's complete nonsense.

And all of the facts, all of the evidence point exactly to the opposite.

And intuition and good wisdom would tell you that it's exactly wrong,

that AI will increase productivity. When productivity is increased

it creates opportunities.

Look, over the history of the arc of time,

society has become more and more productive as a result of technology.

It has created more jobs, not less.

If it's created less jobs,

you know, we’d have 100,000 jobs in United States, and it's not true. It's

created new industries, new opportunities, new markets, new applications.

All of that increase the number of the amount of opportunity and growth.

And so I think the early evidence,

several years into it, it's now 15 years into the era of AI.

The evidence is abundantly clear.

We're creating a whole bunch

of manufacturing jobs because AI requires industrial might.

It’s created jobs in energy sector, in the chip sector, in the infrastructure

sector, land, power and shell. It’s created a whole new slew of AI companies

and of course, the industries that take advantage of AI.

They're also growing.

So AI is creating all kinds of jobs.

Last one on China. You took a very realistic

point of view about the strength that China will have.

So are OpenAI and Anthropic, two of your best customers, in trouble? No.

Not even a little bit.

Both companies are thriving.

They're going to continue to grow.

They're going to go public.

These two companies will be the most successful IPOs in human history.

How is it possible that two companies that are only a few years

old are worth $1 trillion?

And so the idea that,

you know, AI being diffused abundantly free

AI being diffused all over industry, all over society,

so that if someone would like to have an off-the-shelf, incredibly built service

instead of making their own AI, instead of hosting their own

AI to have that choice, I think it's going to be fantastic.

So I think the more AI is used, the more people use AI, the more people

rely on AI, the more opportunity for OpenAI and Anthropic.

So there's no scenario where China runs US companies off the road?

No no no. Zero possibility.

This is, the American tech industry is too vibrant, too

smart, too innovative, move too fast.

Whatever competition there is around the world, bring it on.

The United States is ready.

After Kimi, the powerful Chinese model, dropped,

investors dumped Nvidia shares.

Chip stocks are down 18% in the past month.

What's Wall Street getting wrong about the future of the AI build out?

Well, free AI should be great for hardware.

Free AI should be great for chips, free AI should be great for data centers.

So I think I think the the market just got it wrong.

They got it wrong with DeepSeek.

As you recall, when DeepSeek came out our stock price was down some 30%.

And I think this is exactly the same thing.

What this industry needs is great AI.

And the fact that Kimi 3 is

so extraordinary, Shen is so extraordinary,

Qwen is so extraordinary.

Nemotron, Nvidia's Nemotron, so extraordinary.

All of these models that are open are great

for the industry, including OpenAI's, you know,

GPT 5.6 is incredible.

And of course Codex is incredible.

Claude Code is incredible.

All of these applications that are doing incredible work

that are useful AI, useful AI has finally now arrived.

And useful AI is also profitable AI.

When something is useful, people, you know, desire to use it.

And so all of this is good.

And

close models are excellent. Open

models are necessary and both of it's great for the industry.

Some investors think that AI has peaked.

What do you know about the technology that you can tell them

and the forward direction?

Well, it's impossible that AI has peaked because the diffusion

of AI into society and into industry has barely begun.

That what's what the world is seeing is that this new industry requires CapEx,

unlike the last IT industry, which is very CapEx light

software industry was very CapEx light, which is the reason why software companies

have such high gross margins.

Capital expenditures. You have to build things. That's right.

In order to. Make things.

In order to produce the modern software, you need a computer like this

to generate the software.

And so when AI is doing the coding, it's this machine

that's doing all of the processing of the large language model.

It's doing the reasoning and the thinking.

It's using all kinds of tools.

And to do that, tokens have to be produced.

Math has to be produced in this machine.

And so this machine generates the intelligence that we see on our screen

when words are coming out or images are coming out, or in the future, proteins

and chemicals and robotic systems are articulating a maneuver, maneuvering.

All of that is because this machine is generating the mathematics behind it.

And so the new IT industry, the new software

industry, and in the future, every single industry will be CapEx

heavier, not CapEx heavy, but CapEx heavier.

Most industries today, most intelligence industries today are CapEx light.

That's just simply going to change.

But what you get as a result is incredible intelligence, incredible

productivity, incredible growth.

And so the growth and the profitability

and the prosperity that's going to come as a result of intelligence

being manufactured, is going to more than make up for

more than make up for the CapEx that we're investing in today.

We are laying the foundations, building the infrastructure,

the largest industrial infrastructure build out in human history

so that we can build a foundation of industries in the future

for the next generation.

And so this is just the very beginning.

Semi-conductors, as you have lived, have always been a boom and bust industry.

Are we due for a bust?

No, not for a while. And the reason for.

This time is different.

This time is different because this is not demand-driven.

This time is different because it's not cyc-

It's not seasonal.

It's not demand-driven means seasonal, demand-driven.

This is industrial-driven,

meaning the fundamental technology of computers is changing.

We need a whole new layer of infrastructure in the world.

We have energy, we have the internet, we have roads, we have railroads.

We now need AI.

The intelligence layer built, this infrastructure layer built

on top of all of that.

And this layer needs chips.

You know, I believe we probably need our semiconductor industry

to be somewhere between, you know, 5 to 10 times larger than it is.

Over what period of

time? Over the course of the next ten years.

And so it is way too small today

for and which is the reason why memory is such shortage.

And, you know, storage is such shortage and

optical interconnects are short and packaging is short.

And of course TSMC's boundaries chips are short.

And so everything is in such short supply because it's not a cyclical

nature, it's not demand from consumers.

It's not because of anything like that.

It's fundamental infrastructure-related.

And so the whole industry is short it

I think we need to build up the whole industry several more times.

Your customers are selling hundreds of billions of dollars in debt

to pay for your products.

When does the party stop?

When does your finance team start to worry about these deals?

We're not worried about these deals because of several factors.

One: these

companies are extraordinary companies and they generate a lot of cash.

What they're all doing, what they all see simultaneously,

is that there's a fundamental change in how computing is done.

It's a compute platform shift.

And so whereas computers used to be all content

that was prerecorded, we wrote it in advance.

We recorded it in advance.

We took a picture in advance.

We wrote a story in advance.

In the future, all of that is going to be foundational information

that we generate intelligence on top of.

Instead of search, you simply ask a query.

You have a question and it gives you answers.

Instead of go

use combing

through all these different websites, the AI will generate the answer for you.

So this future is a whole new way of doing computing that's fundamentally

different than the past.

And we need a lot more computers. Now,

the reason why why a couple of years ago,

some of the concerns were when is the ROI coming? Yes.

We now know that AI is profitable.

It's the reason why Anthropic is growing so profitable,

so profitably, and so incredibly fast.

AI is both useful.

That's why we're using it for coding.

AI is profitable.

That's why they want to manufacture so much more.

OpenAI wants to manufacture so much more because these coding agents

are incredibly profitable.

These coding agents are incredibly profitable.

They're doing useful work for very high-paying jobs.

And so many companies like ourselves are happy to pay

hundreds of millions of dollars a year so that we can go

use these AI services to help us augment our coding capability.

We become more productive, we innovate more, we create more good,

we create more, more productive growth, and we become more profitable,

which pays for more AI.

So that flywheel has now started.

And so I think we've, the the industry has now arrived

at a very critical juncture and inflection point if your will,

where we now have profitable AI because we have useful AI,

and because of that, we want to build a lot more AI.

Here's the crux.

You've defined a token as the fundamental unit of artificial intelligence.

What convinces you that a token is going to keep getting more profitable?

The token is, what is called an embedding.

It embeds knowledge, it embeds intelligence.

And so that number, that token

that's being generated by this machine is not a static number.

It's not like pi.

That number encodes smarter and smarter intelligence over time.

And so surprisingly, that single number not

is a whole series of numbers, trillions and trillions of numbers.

Those numbers are getting smarter and smarter over time.

When they get smarter, over time, they become more useful,

more useful, more valuable.

When they become more valuable, people will pay more for it.

And so I know that for most people, the concept of numbers is hard

to be valuable.

But this token, these numbers embed intelligence,

and the intelligence is getting smarter and smarter all the time.

Every industrial build out in history has seen a bubble over investment.

What is this generation's bubble danger?

The bubble will come someday.

It's just not today.

You know, this is in the very beginning of the build out.

And some day-, Five years, ten years?

It's very unlikely in the next five years.

5 to 10?

Yeah, it's very unlikely in the next five years.

And, and we'll see about the 5 to 10 years.

It's just depends on how fast we can build.

Now the challenge of course, is that the rate at which we can build

the infrastructure is limited by physical things.

Today-

the industry could build faster, it could run faster,

but we don't have enough chips, we don't have enough memory.

We don't have enough land, power.

We don't have enough construction workers to build the data centers.

We basically are constrained in every single direction, in every single way.

That constraint is good. That constraint

is what holds the system back.

So that gives us plenty of time to go build out these infrastructure.

And so on the one hand, there's a great desire to invest the CapEx.

On the other hand, the ability for that CapEx to land and turn

into productive supercomputers like this, into AI factories,

that is delayed because of all these different constraints.

And so I think it's going to push out, push out the time

when demand exceeds or supply exceeds demand for some time.

Would you use Kimi, the Chinese open source model?

Of course it's smart. Of course it's smart.

You still have to make sure that that you fine tune it, you safeguard

it, you guardrail it, you put it inside the appropriate guardrails

and the appropriate sandboxes and put security around it.

Give it access control.

Just like all software, you know, we download software from Open Source

all the time.

Open Source is one of the most important pieces of software in history

is called the operating system.

It controls the computer.

It literally operating system controls humanity today.

It's the control fabric around the whole world's digital systems.

It is open source, is based on Linux.

It has the opportunity for millions and millions of people to study it,

to interrogate it, to test it, to make sure that it's hardened.

As a result, we can trust it.

And so Open Source is a fantastic way

for us to harden, for us to trust the infrastructure below us.

We really need to have open source models.

It's essential for society, it's essential for industry,

and it's also the safest and the most secure way to go forward.

And so so I think it's fantastic that Kimi is great and it's fantastic

that there's American open source models, there's European open source models.

There are also Chinese open source models, Japanese open source models.

I was just in Japan.

There are Indian open source models.

I'm working with many of them there.

And so there's going to be open source models from all over the place.

And that openness is fantastic and great for safety,

great for security, great for national security.

You're arguably the most beloved AI CEO.

People line up for your autograph when you're in Asia.

Paparazzi follows your car.

People want you to sign their clothing.

Why is the view of AI so different in Asia than here?

I think.

I think maybe because

the doomers spend too much time

theorizing about these science

fiction outcomes, maybe it makes them sound smart.

And are you talking about some AI CEOs?

Well, you know, I think leaders ought to be thoughtful about doing this.

Listen, if you want to warn the world about the the incredible

capabilities of this technology, I think it's been achieved.

We should dedicate our time.

And of course, how do we make the technology safe?

That's our responsibility as the technology leaders,

you know, telling everybody that the AI technology has to be safe.

You're just reminding yourself you have to make it safe.

So we have to make sure that it's safe.

We have to make sure that people understand the capabilities

of this technology.

We have to advance it in a way that's secure, safe

working, functionally used in using smart ways.

It's our responsibility to do that.

And so so I think that, that first of all, the warning is, is well heated.

And make sure that that regulators and policymakers

are able to understand the nature of this technology.

On the one hand.

On the other hand,

we want to encourage the American people to use this technology.

We lead this industrial revolution

not because we invented all the technology,

but because we applied it with such enthusiasm

that this industrial revolution led to the United States.

We need to make sure that we apply this technology with great enthusiasm

and healthcare, which we know.

Doctor, a doctor in a John Hopkins just wrote

that AI technology is helping advance discovery of cancer a lot more quickly.

We know that what it's done for radiology, we know what it's doing for

software engineering.

And software engineering is the fundamental engine of intelligence

today and fundamental engine of automation and productivity today.

And so we know all of the things that AI is helping us do.

That's incredibly for good.

We know what it's able to do

in helping us advance climate science and understand the climate better.

Because of AI, we're able to upgrade our national power grid.

Because of AI,

we're able to invest in sustainable energy without government subsidies.

All of this is because of this particular industry.

And so I think that we ought to be much more enthusiastic about it.

Help the help United States realize that the only way we get left behind,

the only way we get left behind, is if we don't apply the technology.

Forget who contributes and invents the technology.

The fact that we don't apply it, that's how we're going to get left behind.

And so let's make sure that we remind ourselves of how we became United States

in this modern industrial revolution and that we apply exactly the same enthusiasm,

the same spirit, the same American spirit, so that we can lead the next one.

Some of this burning opposition to AI has even turned violent.

How are you starting to think about your own safety and security?

I'm in a safe place.

I don't feel endangered.

And I think that that mostly I think you

you have to advance the technology safely,

make it a contribution to society.

Always think about, always think about other people's interest and and make sure

that we develop this technology in a way

that helps broadly society and industry.

Now, one of the things that I like to remind people is that that

of all of the technologies we've ever invented, this one closes

the technology divide more than any other, and you can prove it.

You know, this is the first technology and the first

amazing technology in history where anybody can use it.

It is the reason why so many people have used ChatGPT.

It is if you don't know how to use AI, go up to tell AI.

I don't know how to useAI, teach me how to use AI and so AI will teach you.

Improve my prompt.

Yeah, whatever it is, improve my prompt. Exactly.

And so whatever you imagine, whatever you dreamed,

whatever you want to be better at,

just tell AI and give it a chance to take you along a journey.

And and goodness, I use AI every day to advance my knowledge

and help me solve problems and help me understand things

that you know that that are outside of my domain of expertise.

And so AI has been a great coach

and great advisor and, you know, great tutor to me.

I think it should be for everybody.

And yet there is this hostile national mood.

How worried are you that the next Democratic presidential

candidate will be in anti-AI Socialist?

We need to help people understand what AI is and what AI can do.

The first thing I would remind everybody is

AI is creating an enormous number of jobs, not taking it away.

When we tell stories about AI destroying jobs, of course

people are going to be anxious.

Nobody says, nobody says, you know what I want more than anything?

I want to invest in something that would destroy jobs.

Nobody wants that.

And so I think the narrative is wrong.

The rhetoric is wrong and hurtful.

I think that the people who are talking about this,

in fact got it fundamentally wrong, you know.

So that you're saying the industry needs to tell a different

and better consistent story.

Yeah, exactly.

But it's not just a story. It's ground truth.

Just tell people the facts.

The facts are we're creating millions of jobs.

So the industry needs to talk more and differently about the reality.

That's right.

Don't create a narrative.

Don't create a story that is made up.

It is made up that there's going to be a singularity.

It's made up that somehow we're living in a simulation.

These are all made ups.

You know, I think it's fun story. I don't mind listening to it.

And I even enjoy enjoying the narrative,

you know, when it's told by some many of those leaders and my friends.

And, but we just all have to be thoughtful and careful.

So you're scaring people and wrongly. Yeah.

Separately from jobs, you're talking about the sort of creepy elements

of the technology, and you're saying there's a way to inoculate against that.

That's right.

Because they're just made up they’re science fiction.

They're Hollywood.

It's not true. It's not true.

The closest thing, to true AI is R2-D2 and C-3PO.

And who doesn't want R2-D2 and C-3PO?

You've developed a warm

relationship with President Trump.

You text. He's very responsive.

What's it like to communicate with the president like that?

He's smart. He remembers everything.

Goodness gracious. He sure knows numbers.

And he's the only the only president

that has ever remembered H20, H200.

NVIDIA’s Blackwell. He knows our next generation.

Rubin.

He has just an amazing memory.

And we're sitting here in a new factory on the first.

The first time I met him, he said he wants to restore

the manufacturing capacity of the United States.

He wants United States to be a to be re-industrialized.

He wants a secure and resilient supply chain.

He wants to move semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States.

Literally.

We're sitting in a plant that is a direct result

of the first conversation I had with President Trump.

This was in Fort Worth, Texas.

We're in Fort Worth, Texas. And it is it is

He is single-mindedly about creating jobs.

He single mindedly about reshaping the American

economy and the labor workforce.

He was in every single conversation I ever had with him.

He single mindedly about that, he single mindedly about making sure

that the United States economy is thriving because he knows that if America's rich

America will have the mightiest military because you got to fund it somehow.

And so having having United States have a vibrant ecosystem,

vibrant economy, a rich nation, it's foundational to the safest nation.

And so he understands he understands that very clearly.

And he's just so single-mindedly about it.

It's really inspiring.

What does the administration get wrong on AI?

I, I think that that regulation

of the technology needs,

needs to think about the unintended consequences of regulation.

We need to think about think about AI,

not in the context of some kind of a foot

race in a 100 meter dash.

The narrative that whoever gets to the 100 meter

dash, whoever wins that wins it forever- is nonsense.

The idea that-

And here you're talking about the US and China.

That's right. It's complete nonsense.

All of those stories being made up is scary.

In Washington, D.C..

Where do you think it's carrying the white House?

It's scary to well, it's scaring policymakers.

And and there's a reason for that because some of the companies hope

that the government would be helpful

in creating regulations in that they're at vantage.

I think that we ought to compete.

I think we ought to openly compete.

We we ought to recognize that this is very important technology

and the ultimate success, the win.

The ultimate win is when society uses it.

The ultimate win is when industry uses it, has nothing to do with who invents it.

We didn't invent electricity.

We didn't invent most of the technology.

We didn't invent manufacturing.

We didn't invent most of the technology.

That's led to today's industrial revolution.

And yet the United States applied it faster, more enthusiastically,

with more ingenuity than any other country it led to, led

to the United States of today.

I think we ought to let the American spirit thrive.

We ought to let the American industry run.

And, of course, we have to be mindful

about regulation and make sure that the technology is safe.

But to think that there's going to be one winner and whoever crosses

a finish line, you know, 17 days from now, that's complete nonsense.

That's completely made up.

Fun question.

Who's someone in the president's cabinet

that's smart and good to work with on building the future?

I love working with every one of them.

Susie's incredible.

Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff. Yep.

Secretary Bessent, Secretary Lutnick.

These are incredible people.

And and they dedicate they dedicate themselves

to President Trump and they want to see his presidency success.

And we all do.

You know, he's my president.

And, and I want my I want my president to be successful

so that our country could be successful.

They're definitely are signs that they're getting more restrictive.

We're looking at heading that way.

Are you worried about that? Sure.

And I would just add a caution.

And this is to the administration, to the president.

And any policymaker, all policymakers, before you listen to all the rhetoric,

before you listen to all the stories, before you manifest

some kind of artificial intelligence future, that is just not true.

It is now grounded in fact.

It's completely science fiction.

The technology is very important.

Of course, the technology is powerful.

I'm one of the people in the world that builds the technology.

You know, the idea that somehow has consciousness, that's all made up.

It's all complete nonsense.

And it sounds like you're basically afraid the administration is going to fall for it.

Over-correct. Over-correct.

Because they fall for these narratives, I think that they ought to be

sure to talk to more people,

talk to many CEOs, talk to many scientists.

Don't talk to 1 or 2.

Don't make a don't don't make a knee jerk reaction.

Tomorrow is not the tomorrow is not some impending,

you know, imminent, you know, day that you have to make

a decision, be more informed, take your time.

Of course. Be deliberate. Of course.

Be focused, of course, be purposeful and but be informed and give.

Give yourself lots of opportunities to talk to people.

President Trump has floated the idea of the government

taking stakes in leading AI companies.

You're one of the most valuable.

You run one of the most valuable companies on earth.

If President Trump called

you and asked you for an equity stake, what would you say?

It's unnecessary.

The United States has an equity stake in NVIDIA.

It has a, it has a fantastic stake in our success.

We paid $10 billion with worth of taxes last year.

And and we're going to pay a lot more taxes this year.

And we create lots of jobs and they created lots of taxes.

And I think that that the more successful American companies are,

the richer these companies are.

Generate more taxes, create more jobs, all Americans benefit.

And don't forget, most Americans today are in the stock market.

And when the stock market is up, everybody benefits.

And so the United States already has a stake

in all of these American, great American companies.

We just want to make sure that they continue to thrive and be successful.

So you would rule it out?

I wouldn't advise it now.

It's unnecessary.

Do you think we're ready for Anthropic’s powerful Claude Mythos

to be available to everyone?

Are systems sufficiently hardened?

It should absolutely be available to everyone.

They, it's their responsibility.

Make sure that it's hardened.

No soft-

So you're saying all users, not just a selected institutions as it is now?

That's correct. Yeah.

They had to make it available for people and it's their job to make the technology

hardened and safe and secure and whatever, whatever,

whatever jail breaks or whatever vulnerabilities there are in the software,

as soon as they find it, they ought to fix it.

That's the nature of software.

And look, look what happened.

It was released somehow.

It was a jailbreak and it was able to do things

that that maybe they were trying to guardrail it for not to do.

But everything was fine.

You and I are here having a conversation and.

And not that.

Not that I'm encouraging it, but that's the job of companies that

are supposed to identify vulnerabilities and patch it up as quickly as possible.

So this is a message to both the white House and to Anthropic

that you think that Mythos should be available to all.

Mythos should be available as a service.

Yeah.

And and remember,

just because Mythos is not available, open models are available anyhow.

And so so I think that let Anthropic run

let them continue to advance the technology that they created,

let it be put in the hands of as many companies as possible,

so we can all use it and benefit from it. And,

you know, holding, holding Anthropic back

is not not in the benefit of the United States and let them run.

Should open source model companies be allowed to distill closed models

in violation of terms of service agreements, then resell

their highly capable open source models in the competitive marketplace?

It depends on the terms and conditions of the service

and if if the service provider is unhappy about some company

taking advantage of exploiting the terms of of their agreement and their license,

they ought to reach out to that company.

And there's there are many ways to deal with that today.

You know, we have a lot of conventional ways using laws and regulations to do so.

However, distillation, learning

from AI, learning from other, other

sources of knowledge is fundamental to intelligence.

We're constantly learning from other people.

I'm learning from you and just the questions

you're asking and you're learning from me.

And all day long we're learning from each other.

And so AI has to learn from something.

And so the original AI, no matter who’s it is, whether it's a closed model,

it obviously scraped the internet of all of the previously learned knowledge.

And now AI is generating more content than humans.

You know, in another few more years, the internet would be 99%

AI generated content, and that content is generated by some AI.

And so you're constantly distilling the intelligence of some other AI's anyways.

And so the idea that that AI can learn,

that's a good thing.

We want AI’s to be smart.

We want every AI to be smart, and a smart AI is a safer AI.

And so so I think the, the,

the important thing is to, to split these two ideas.

Should AI's be able to learn

as much as they possibly can from many sources of knowledge as they can?

The answer is yes.

Can AI violate privacy? No.

Can AI violate terms of an agreement?

The answer is no.

And if somebody violates a term of agreement, contact that company.

Take care of it.

You have a lot of employees in Israel.

How do you think about the Middle East AI build out in the context of the war?

Well, first of all, I'm concerned about my families in Israel.

I have 6500 families there, and

they've been in the middle of conflict for some time now.

And and I'm happy that they're well,

I wish them to be continued to be well.

And I look forward to when the conflict ends.

I the the UAE is investing in the Middle, in the Middle East and AI.

I think that's terrific.

Are you still bullish on the UAE's a giant AI player?

Yeah, they have a vision to be an AI hub someday

and building upon their natural resources of, of oil

and energy, they have the opportunity to reinvent themselves into an AI hub.

I'm proud of them.

I'm delighted that they're interested in this.

I'm delighted by their vision.

I- you know, the UAE is already so modernized.

It's a place where smart people go and they're thriving.

They're building new, new companies and new innovation.

This is going to be their next, next source of industrial strength.

And I'm looking forward to that. It's great for them.

I'm about to fall through the floor.

I want to be respectful of your time.

Might ask you one question about jobs

and then a couple questions about life lessons.

Is that okay with you?

I got all the time in the world. Very kind of you.

I'm going to ask you about that, because I know that is one of your theories.

You're one of the most valuable companies

in the world, and you have 50,000 employees.

You've said in ten years you may have 75,000.

Quote, “as small as possible.”

You said many of the other tech giants are in six figures.

How do you do that?

A strategy.

Strategy involves utilizing your resources as efficiently as possible.

You know, your goal is to realize a future vision

with the limited resources that you have and to use that resource wisely.

And so part of my job is to be strategic,

to be mindful about the resources that I have to apply them in precisely,

you know, as well as possible way to realize that vision and maximize

the return on investment capital, if you will,

in the speaking in financial terms.

But it's really about getting the most impact for whatever

resources that you have.

That is the fundamental job of a CEO.

And so,

you know,

I have the benefit of starting this company

when I was 30 years old, as you mentioned earlier.

And, and I've been doing this job probably longer than any CEO in tech history.

And so I have the benefit of practice.

And so over time, I've, you know, this is my craft, if you will.

This is my kung fu, you know, and and so I, that's what you got to do.

In every industrial revolution, some tasks

and some jobs become automated, even if more net jobs are created.

What are the jobs and tasks

that will go away like in any other industrial revolution?

If your task- if your job is the task, if your job is the task,

then it's very likely that when that task is automated,

your job will be eliminated or changed.

And so, for example,

customer service call centers, that's a that is a task

that is very likely to be highly automated.

However, the management, the coordination, the improvement,

the evaluation of all of the AIs that are now handling

the actual calls itself

will likely continue to be a human-oriented task.

And so just remember that

a job has a purpose which includes many tasks.

And so one of my favorite examples is the original example about radiology.

Radiologists have a task of studying scans,

but the purpose is to end human suffering, is to help

people understand their disease, to help collaborate

with other doctors to help identify the disease.

And, and so the purpose doesn't change when the task has been automated.

And something that I tell early-career

people in my life is don't mistake your task for the job and the opportunity.

That's right. Exactly. That's exactly right.

Hey, look, today most of the people in IT,

in technology sits in front of a keyboard typing.

If we're to take a picture of this and look at it ten years,

20 years from now, it would look like back the pictures we see of back

in the old days of offices with people sitting in front of IBM Selectrics typing.

And so

we don't type.

Typing is not the job.

Solving problems. Innovating.

Discovering impact.

Creating value.

Helping end human suffering. Bringing joy and delight.

Whatever, whatever it is that your job purpose is

doesn't fundamentally change because you don't have to type anymore.

We don't have to type anymore. That's great.

When do you expect the ChatGPT moment for robots?

When they'll be used and useful in the everyday lives of ordinary people?

The ChatGPT moment in 2022 was the moment

that, was not the moment that AI was useful.

We had to wait another four years.

Chat

GPT moment was when we saw that

it was interesting, that it did something surprising.

And so if that's the case, then the Chat

GPT moment of robots has already arrived.

You could tell a robot, you know,

put the apple in the drawer

and the robot will actually reason about what is the sequence of tasks

that it has to do, including opening the drawer before

it puts the apple in there. It will reason about that.

And when somebody sees that for the first time,

see a mechanical robot actually doing that,

I think it opens their mind about what the future of robotics can do.

I think that the ChatGPT moment of robots has already arrived.

Now the question is when are we going to make it useful?

And if we make it useful in the next 3 to 4 years, I would not be surprised.

We've moved into the

agentic era of AI won't be the next era of AI?

Well, the agent,

the agentic moment of AI is the capability is now here.

Now it's about the diffusion of the capability.

Very soon, very soon

the reason why we need so many more computers is because today

we have a billion people using computers.

And these computers we use like right now when you're not talking,

we're largely not using our computer.

The computer's unused.

And so we have a billion people using computers.

Maybe at any given point in time, only 1 billion people.

Excuse me,

100 million people are using their computer at the same time around the Earth.

Now, in the future, we will be supported by, augmented by,

surrounded by with a whole bunch of agents who are helping us do things.

And those agents are going to be using computers all the time.

Agents are not going to become computers.

Agents are going to use computers.

And so these agents, we're going to have 100 billion,

a trillion agents that are running all of the time, smart agents, lesser

smart agents,

specialized agents, super agents, all kinds of agents running all the time.

And so the number of computers we need is going to grow tremendously.

We'll finish with a rapid round on life lessons.

And thank you very much for your generosity, for taking.

I enjoyed it, Mike. It's always great to see you. I'm grateful. Thank you.

Likewise. You're a great American story.

Born in Taiwan, sent to the US at age nine.

Went to a pretty rough and tumble boarding school,

it sounds like. You've talked about, you were bullied, started Nvidia at age 30.

You said the key to greatness is plenty of pain and suffering.

What is the pain and suffering in your career

that resulted in the most benefit, or that has allowed you to create

and lead this company?

Nothing.

No, no

great athlete just happens to be a great athlete.

It's a lot of practice when nobody's watching.

A lot of setbacks, a lot of losing.

I, you know, just a lot of pain and suffering

and that that is really what elevates craft.

It elevates character.

It gives you confidence.

It gives you resilience, allows you to handle very difficult challenges.

You know, it's no different than when when athletes say

that somehow

time slows down when you're in the middle of doing something when in the zone

or when the pressure is high, I feel the same way.

You know, when the stress is at this highest,

when tension is at this highest, I kind of feel like time slows down.

And the reason for that, it comes from practice.

It could just come from doing something over and over again,

about managing your your own stress and managing your own focus

and having the confidence to realize

you can work it through, and being surrounded by amazing people.

And so all of that is, is a combination of, you know, that

condition that leads to you being would do something at a very high level.

And so pain and suffering is necessary.

What would you say to some nine year old Jenson, who's abroad, about coming

to America? What to be excited about and what to watch out for?

America is the greatest country in the world,

full stop.

And it's the greatest country in the world

not because we don't have our challenges, not because we don't have

our disagreements. It's our, it's the greatest country in the world.

Because

because of all those great challenges, because of all those disagreements. We

somehow manage to work it through and and through open discourse,

through a vibrant system that allows freedom,

freedom to speak up, freedom to innovate, freedom to start something,

freedom to collaborate and work with people.

The environment naturally attracts amazing minds.

It naturally creates a condition for innovators

and entrepreneurs and great researchers and great minds.

It creates the condition for anybody

with desire to be able to make a great living.

You could be a construction worker, a plumber, an electrician,

you could be a scientist.

You could create. You can be an artist.

You could, you know, you could create a great living.

And so I think that this is an extraordinary country.

I advise every bright mind around the world to find your way here.

We need you here.

This country was built by immigrants.

This country is going to need amazing immigrants in the future.

And they're going to

they're going to come here and join the amazing minds that are already here.

And so we have 400 million amazing people

who welcome the brightest minds

and the greatest people in the future to come here.

You don't wear a watch.

And at this moment, that's probably a good thing. Why?

Because now is the most important time.

I refuse to let outlook manage my my life,

and I refuse to let a watch manage my life.

If if I if I'm too late, somebody will let me know.

In the meantime, I'm 100% here.

And so now is the most important time.

One fun thing. You've said that besides work,

you spend all your time with your family.

Take us through a Saturday with your family when you're not working.

Perfect.

Saturday. I wake up early and

I play with the dogs and

shortly after Laurie walks the dogs.

I start working and I work until lunch

and we have a great lunch, the dogs are asleep.

We work through, work through to dinner and the kids come over.

We make dinner together.

We're all together and join dinner, have a cocktail and play with the dogs.

And that's a perfect day, you know.

And so if I could have that day every weekend.

Well, as it turns out every weekend is exactly like that.

Wake up at the same time, play with the dogs.

Hope for,

I hope to see the family.

Hope to see the kids come over.

You know? That's it. That's the perfect day.

Jensen Huang,

thanks for a memorable, meaty conversation.

Thank you Mike, great to see you.