SemiAnalysis author speculates Jensen Huang's resignation is related to GPU smuggling and export controls
Nvidia and the World Without Jensen
Jensen Huang is no longer Nvidia CEO; the board had previously investigated his conduct and weighed whether he should stay, and Colette Kress became interim CEO. Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis believes the resignation is directly related to GPU smuggling and export control politics, and his Accelerator Model tracked more than 1.5GW of restricted Nvidia chips ultimately flowing into China, a figure that does not include chips Nvidia specifically built to circumvent U.S. rules. The article says the House passed the RASA bill 369-22 and it is awaiting a Senate vote, with Nvidia and Oracle lobbying heavily against it; the author judges that after Jensen Huang's departure, AI and chip restrictions on China will advance faster, and argues that preserving channels for Chinese labs to use GPUs remotely is more in line with U.S. interests. The article lists two smuggling cases, including Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw and others accused of transshipping $2.5 billion worth of servers through Southeast Asia, and 9 people in Keelung accused of smuggling 130 B300 servers, of which 74 had reached China.
The article links Jensen Huang's resignation, GPU smuggling cases and the RASA bill vote into one thread, offering an industry perspective for understanding the direction of chip export controls.