China is going to win the artificial intelligence race, says Jensen Huang. At first glance, it is easy to assume Nvidia’s billionaire founder is just talking his book. Nvidia does stand to gain the most from any narrative that encourages the US to step up its investment in AI or ease regulatory restrictions on its development, thus boosting demand for Nvidia chips. But does he have a point?

Not long ago, about a fifth of Nvidia’s data centre revenue came from China. Its fortunes depend on a steady stream of orders for its chips from governments, cloud providers and AI research labs around the world. The fear of China pulling ahead in AI reinforces that demand.

Still, Huang’s warning may hold some truth. AI development has started shifting from being limited primarily by high-end chip availability to being constrained by electricity supply.