NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang made a striking appearance at the 3rd China International Supply Chain Expo on July 16, trading his signature leather jacket for traditional Tang attire. This marks his third visit to China this year following previous trips in January and April. The tech pioneer delivered part of his opening ceremony speech in Mandarin—a first that left him admitting, "I feel very nervous."

Addressing the packed venue, Huang expressed admiration for the expo's scale and vibrant atmosphere, noting how it reflects China's robust support for innovation. He revealed over 1.5 million Chinese developers currently innovate on NVIDIA's platforms, with groundbreaking AI models emerging from entities like DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent, MiniMax and Baidu. "China's open-source AI has become a global catalyst," Huang emphasized, "enabling every nation and industry to join the AI revolution." He positioned open-source development as crucial for establishing international AI safety standards and benchmarks.

Huang compared AI's transformative potential to foundational technologies like electricity and the internet, describing it as infrastructure revolutionizing supply chains. He detailed how hundreds of Chinese projects leverage NVIDIA's Omniverse platform to create digital twins optimizing factories and warehouses. "The next wave will be robots understanding physical worlds," Huang projected, envisioning factories within a decade operated by AI-directed robotic teams collaborating with humans to manufacture intelligent products. He concluded AI would ignite new industrial revolutions across all sectors.

During a July 15 meeting with China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) chairman Ren Hongbin, Huang stressed the critical importance of U.S. companies establishing roots in China's dynamic market. He praised the rapid advancement and vast potential of Chinese AI development.

The executive's fashion choices drew attention when July 14 photos surfaced showing him wearing leather outerwear amid Beijing's 35°C heat alongside Xiaomi founder Lei Jun. Huang humorously explained the sartorial decision: "My suit wasn't dry-cleaned—it's my only one and somewhat worn out. Hopefully this jacket looks presentable."

Reflecting on NVIDIA's journey, Huang traced how the company's 1999 creation of the world's first programmable GPU ignited the AI revolution. This breakthrough shifted computing from CPU-dependent logic to GPU-powered machine learning—what Huang termed "the computer industry's reboot." He recalled personally delivering NVIDIA's inaugural AI supercomputer to what was then an obscure startup—OpenAI—in 2016.

From Kepler to Blackwell architectures, Huang detailed NVIDIA's iterative progress in AI computation, enabling platforms like WeChat, Alipay, autonomous vehicles, and smartphones. He particularly anticipated AI's transformative impact on medical imaging diagnostics. "Chinese developers are accelerating AI innovation globally," Huang noted, citing world-class contributions from domestic firms. "Within ten years, AI understanding physical realms will redesign manufacturing alongside humans."