Nvidia's Jensen Huang Once Called Huawei China's Most Formidable Tech Company, But CEO Ren Zhengfei Says Its Chips Still Lag Behind US Rivals

In March, Nvidia Corp. NVDA CEO Jensen Huang praised Huanwei Technologies as China's "most formidable technology company." On Tuesday, Huawei's founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, downplayed the hype, stating that the company's chip technology still trails that of the U.S.

What Happened: In an interview with China's state-run People's Daily, Zhengfei said that the company's chips remain "one generation behind" those of U.S. competitors, reported Reuters.

“The United States has exaggerated Huawei’s achievements. Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their evaluation,” he stated, adding, “Our single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation.”

“We use mathematics to supplement physics, non-Moore’s law to supplement Moore’s law and cluster computing to supplement single chips and the results can also achieve practical conditions. Software is not a bottleneck for us,” the CEO continued.

Huawei is investing 180 billion yuan (approximately $25 billion) annually in research and development, with one-third allocated to theoretical research, Ren said during the interview.

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Why It's Important: Huawei's Ascend line of AI chips directly rivals Nvidia's in the Chinese market.

While Nvidia remains the global leader in AI chip technology, U.S. export restrictions have prohibited it from selling its most advanced chips to China, allowing Huawei to gain ground.

In May, the U.S. Commerce Department stated that deploying Ascend chips could breach export control regulations.

In April, Huawei introduced the “AI CloudMatrix 384” — a cluster integrating 384 Ascend 910C chips designed for training AI models. Analysts suggest this system may surpass Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 in certain performance metrics.

Last month, it was reported that Huang cautioned that restricting access to China’s rapidly growing AI market could negatively impact not only Nvidia but also U.S. jobs and technological innovation.

Nvidia is showing a strong upward price trend across short, medium and long-term periods, according to Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings. Additional metrics can be found here.