U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo spoke at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday as part of a plea to Congress about needing more funding for AI export controls, and during the event, she called out NVIDIA, a company that she has apparently become unhappy with for updating its GPUs so they can be sold to the Chinese.
Here’s what Raimondo, who was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris on March 3, 2021, said, according to a report that Fortune shared over the weekend:
“We cannot let China get these chips. Period,” she said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, on Saturday. “We’re going to deny them our most cutting-edge technology.”
“I have a $200 million budget. That’s like the cost of a few fighter jets. Come on,” she said. “If we’re serious, let’s go fund this operation like it needs to be funded.”
“I know there are CEOs of chip companies in this audience who were a little cranky with me when I did that because you’re losing revenue,” she said. “Such is life. Protecting our national security matters more than short-term revenue.”
“If you redesign a chip around a particular cut line that enables them to do AI, I’m going to control it the very next day,” Raimondo said.
“This is the biggest threat we’ve ever had and we need to meet the moment,” she said.
According to NVIDIA’s financial results for Third Quarter Fiscal 2024, the company earned $14.51 billion in revenue from its Data Center segment—up 41% from Q2, and up 279% from a year ago.
HGX H200 systems, which feature NVIDIA’s H200 Tensor Core GPU, the first GPU with HBM3e memory, are expected to be available in the second quarter of next year.