Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Friday he will not attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, choosing not to join several of his tech giants scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. .
Instead, Huang said he will be “on the road” to celebrate Lunar New Year with employees and their families.
Taiwan-born Huang's company has ridden the AI wave to become the world's most valuable company. The company celebrated Wednesday at an Nvidia party in Taipei.
He said he has not yet discussed President Joe Biden's new artificial intelligence export restrictions with the incoming Trump administration.
“Not yet,” Mr. Huang said. “But we look forward to celebrating the Trump administration once it takes office.”
According to Chinese social media posts, Huang attended NVIDIA's New Year party in Shenzhen on Wednesday. A person close to Nvidia said he was scheduled to travel to Beijing for the company's party on Monday.
On the same day, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is scheduled to attend the inauguration, and will remain in Washington, D.C., absent from the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. .
Huang said he also had lunch with CC Wei, chairman of TSMC, Nvidia's largest supplier, to discuss expanding production of Nvidia's cutting-edge Blackwell AI chips.
As demand for AI chips soared, so did Nvidia's value. The chipmaker has a market capitalization of $3.4 trillion, and its stock has soared more than 140% in the past 12 months.
But on Monday, the Biden administration unveiled new export restrictions on advanced computer chips that could hurt Nvidia's profits.
But new U.S. government export restrictions on AI chips could complicate Nvidia's ability to deliver the strong revenue growth investors expect.
The regulation restricts AI chip exports to most countries except some close U.S. allies, including Taiwan.
It also maintains export blocks to some countries, including China, as the U.S. seeks to close regulatory loopholes and prevent China from acquiring advanced chips that could strengthen its military. .
Nvidia on Monday criticized recent US efforts to tighten its grip on the flow of AI chips around the world, saying the regulations jeopardize the US' current leadership in AI.
It is unclear how the Trump administration will enforce the new rules, but it shares similar views with Biden on the competitive threat posed by China.
Trump's team did not respond to requests for comment.
The new regulations are scheduled to go into effect 120 days after promulgation, giving the new administration time to consider them.
