Faisal Islam: What the boss of US tech giant Nvidia told me about China and national security

Jensen Huang has the air of the late Steve Jobs about him. I have interviewed both, and the up-close charisma - and occasionally scratchy genius - is shared.

Both sported a signature item of black clothing, although Huang opts for a leather jacket rather than the Apple founder's turtle neck.

Both are innovators revered in the tech world. However, Huang is now being investigated over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.

Everything you have heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the past few months - good, bad, revolutionary and catastrophic - is dependent on having the most powerful frontier AI models.

In turn they depend on the most powerful microchips, and for years that has been this very company, Nvidia, led by Huang, and his technology rooted in repurposed games graphics and the manufacturing prowess of Taiwan.

Names such as Gracehopper, Vera and Rubin mean almost nothing to the public, but are the names of chips powering the creation of AI models transforming the world.

I met Huang as he held court with reporters and offered words of encouragement for the UK's tech future during US President Donald Trump's state visit to the UK in September last year.

It was also right in the middle of his attempts to get Trump to lift export bans to China of some of the highest performing AI chips, specifically the H200.

An export ban on a less powerful chip had already been lifted. He was, I suggested to him, one of the few people who could walk into the White House to meet Trump, and a few days later meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

He made no secret of his views, nor his assessment that he had persuaded Trump of his case.

"President Trump is very clear. He wants America to win and and President Xi wants China to win, and it's possible for both of them too. And the reason for that is because it's not a zero-sum game. The advance of human society is not a zero-sum game."

However, his view about "zero-sum game" is not backed by many in national security circles.