Global tech leaders recently packed Europe’s annual Web Summit held in Lisbon, Portugal, to talk artificial intelligence, robots and startups. The Web Summit 2025 takes place under the shadow of global tensions over cutting-edge hardware and software and the resources needed to build them. The four-day event is called “Davos for geeks” and is likely to see over 70,000 visitors from 150 countries, including 2,500 startups and 1,000 investors.China’s rise towards tech dominance is in the thoughts of many attendees. Rev Lebaredian, vice president of omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia spoke about the importance of Chinese market. The American chip giant’s CEO Jensen Huang warned earlier this month that China “is going to win” the race to master next-generation artificial intelligence. He believes that it will do so despite the fact that Nvidia’s most advanced chips — used to train and run AI systems — are unavailable in China due to export restrictions.“Half the world’s computer scientists and computer engineers who are on the frontier of these technologies are in China,” Nvidia’s vice-president of simulation technology Rev Lebaredian told AFP. “If we try to exclude them, they will find a way to go develop the same things,” Lebaredian said. “We will lose the opportunity to work with them and benefit from the work that they do.”Lebaredian reports directly to CEO Jensen Huang. Put simply, Lebaredian is in charge of building robot brains.Nvidia cannot sell its most advanced AI chip to ChinaThe Trump administration recently made it clear that it is not planning to allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced AI chip, known as the Blackwell, to China. “As for the most advanced chips, the Blackwell chip, that’s not something we’re interested in selling to China at this time,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.The remarks echoed comments made by President Donald Trump, when he declared that the most advanced chips made by the world’s most valuable company would be reserved for U.S. companies and kept out of China and other countries.Trump had hinted he might discuss the chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping at their summit in South Korea, but ultimately said the topic did not come up.
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