// BBC BUSINESS NEWS — FINANZA
Faisal Islam: What Jensen Huang told me about China, national security and persuading Trump
Watch: Jensen Huang speaks to the BBC's Faisal Islam in 2025
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.
However, Huang, who is now being investigated over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, is far more important to the future of the world order than Jobs.
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.