Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Calls AI Distillation Competition, Not Theft
Huang said companies can study competitors’ products, as U.S. officials weigh measures against overseas firms accused of extracting capabilities from American AI systems.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI model distillation is “competition,” rejecting claims that companies learning from other AI systems are engaging in theft as the dispute intensifies between the United States and China.
AI model distillation involves training one model on the outputs of another model. The practice has become a flashpoint in the race between U.S. and Chinese companies to develop more capable artificial intelligence systems.
Asked Monday whether distillation amounted to robbery, Huang said, “That’s called competition.” He added that companies are allowed to test other products and said Nvidia’s systems are sometimes stripped down to their basic components so competitors can study how they work.
“I’d really prefer they didn’t,” Huang said. “But, you know, frankly, competition makes everything better.”
Huang said companies that do not want their products used this way can identify their customers and disable access to the service. His comments came as U.S. officials consider measures against overseas companies that use distillation to extract capabilities from American-built models.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the practice as “theft” in July and threatened sanctions against overseas companies that use it. Earlier in September, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Chinese AI companies of conducting industrial-scale knowledge-distillation campaigns that violated U.S. companies’ terms of use.
Anthropic also said it had found Alibaba and DeepSeek engaging in illicit distillation. China has rejected the accusations.
The disagreement adds another point of tension to the broader U.S.-China competition over artificial intelligence. Huang’s comments were published at 9:55 a.m. ET Monday, Sept. 28.
