Do you really think that business would be guided by morals in a situation like this? “From now on, we’ll buy inferior chips—hurting our own business—because Jensen Huang cheated on his wife or told his girlfriend something about Nvidia’s plans?”
No, I definitely don’t think so. Even if Nvidia had knowingly sold to a banned party, it wouldn’t cause issues in their customer relationships—and I don’t even believe Nvidia did that knowingly.
If we look back at history a bit:
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Did it make a difference when Ericsson got caught paying ISIS to do business in Iraq? It had zero impact. On the contrary, shortly after the scandal and the fines, a US carrier (AT&T) signed the largest deal in its history with Ericsson—worth $14 billion. They cut a deal with the authorities, paid the fine, and moved on.
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Did it make a difference when Bezos’ affair scandals hit the headlines? It didn’t affect Amazon’s or AWS’s business in the slightest.
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Did it make a difference when Nvidia’s chips were found to have ended up in China and into Huawei’s hands despite sanctions? It didn’t affect demand in any way.
In my opinion, the worst-case scenario would be Nvidia getting hit with tens of billions in fines if they had knowingly sold to sanctioned Chinese entities. And at the same time, Jensen Huang being slapped with treason charges for sharing information with an operative.
How would this affect Nvidia’s business? Exactly by the amount of money paid in fines. I really don’t believe the business world would start “boycotting” critical AI infrastructure because of this. I suspect the business community would actually start rallying behind Jensen Huang—I reckon he would also be seen as a victim in that situation.
And how would this affect Nokia? Not one bit.