On January 19, Jensen Huang (Founder and CEO of NVIDIA) appeared in Beijing for NVIDIA’s Chinese new year appreciation event.
Jensen Huang, who has already visited Shenzhen Taipei and Beijing, will attend NVIDIA China annual meeting as per the itinerary previously revealed. NVIDIA staff at the site confirmed that the NVIDIA Beijing branch annual meeting will take place on January 20. Jensen Huang then flew to Shanghai.
Jensen Huang, in his opening remarks at the Chinese New Year event of appreciation, extended New Year greetings for all attendees. In his reflections on the 60-year history in the computer industry, Jensen Huang emphasized that this year marks the beginning of not only a new computing era but also a new year. Jensen Huang emphasized NVIDIA’s important role in “reinventing” the computer, particularly through the development a new type computer based on NVIDIA graphics processors which is pivotal to the advancement of AI.
Jensen Huang explained that his visit to China was to attend the NVIDIA China Annual Meeting with employees and “celebrate” the Spring Festival together. He also shared that NVIDIA is operating in China since over 25 years with almost 4000 employees. In the last few years, NVIDIA’s workforce has grown by 56%. There are now offices and branches in Beijing, Shanghai Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Jensen Huang emphasized the NVIDIA’s employee turnover rate of just 0.9% per year.
Jensen Huang highlighted NVIDIA’s extensive ecosystem of developers in China. This includes 1.5 million CUDA Software ecosystem developers, and partnerships with almost 3000 startups in the country. Jensen Huang, the sole award recipient at the appreciation event presented awards to developers and NVIDIA campus representatives, as well as various other projects.
Jensen Huang highlighted NVIDIA’s achievements and investments in China during the dinner portion of the event. He cited the long-standing GeForce graphics card as an example of how China was instrumental in NVIDIA’s growth. NVIDIA evolved alongside the Chinese technology sector.
Jensen Huang, during his visit to Taiwan, before arriving in China met with industry figures, such as Wei Zhejia Chairman of TSMC and Lin Xianming Chairman of Wistron a contract manufacturer of AI servers, who provided further insight into NVIDIA’s market activities.
Jensen Huang, who attended the Wistron Annual Meeting, revealed that NVIDIA has placed “significant” AI server orders with Wistron.
The company has a long-standing tradition of sending Jensen Huang to China for its annual employee meeting. He also visited NVIDIA offices in Beijing and Shanghai to attend the annual meetings for the Chinese regional branches.
NVIDIA has officially expressed its objections to the new regulations introduced by the outgoing U.S. president Biden on the spread and regulation of AIGPU chips. The company criticised the document as being “secretly written” and lacking a proper legislative review. It also criticized it for being rushed through during the last transition period of the government without adequate industry consultation. NVIDIA argued the AI GPU-related technologies and chips targeted by the regulations were already widely used in mainstream consumer hardware and gaming PCs, and that imposing controls on them would not improve U.S. national security but instead weaken the country’s competitiveness in technology innovation.
Jensen Huang stated in a recent media interview that, despite his absence from the inauguration of U.S. president Biden, he would congratulate Donald Trump on his inauguration. However, the company has yet to engage in discussions with the new government officials about the measures taken by the Biden administration on AI chip exports.
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