On July 24, Beijing time, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang posted his first-ever message on the X platform, sparking widespread discussion online.
That's right, his first ever. Huang had never before created a personal verified social media account.
He was absent from X, Facebook, and Instagram. Previously, anyone wanting to hear from him had to wait for NVIDIA's product launches or interviews at tech summits.
When this account first appeared last night, many people's initial reaction was to question if it was a fan account.
Yet within 20 minutes, his follower count exceeded 10,000; within just over an hour, it surpassed 100,000. As of the time of writing, the account has amassed nearly 700,000 followers, and the post's view count has exceeded 40 million—a textbook example of a meteoric debut.
Interestingly, just minutes after the account was created, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was among the first to follow and share the post. Prominent leaker Mark Gurman and Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also flocked to the comments section to welcome him, with Elon Musk himself liking and sharing the post.
Huang's first post was not a casual greeting or a self-introduction. Instead, it featured an open letter co-signed by 25 major US tech companies, titled "Open-Weight and American AI Leadership."
What exactly is an open-weight model? In simple terms, it means the model's parameters and architecture are fully disclosed. Anyone can download, modify, and deploy it independently, without having to pay fees to closed-source vendors based on usage volume.
The 25 companies in the coalition include established giants like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, and Dell, alongside AI newcomers such as Hugging Face, Mistral AI, and Perplexity. Top venture capital firms like a16z and Y Combinator are also involved, as are long-standing open-source organizations like the Linux Foundation and Mozilla. This coalition effectively covers the entire industry chain, from hardware and cloud services to large models, investment, and the open-source community.
Notably, three leading closed-source large model companies—OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—were collectively absent from the list.
The reason is straightforward: the more popular open-source models become, the greater the impact on the closed-source business. For companies that charge for API calls, if everyone switches to open-source models and deploys them independently, who will continue to buy their services?
From the perspective of hardware sellers like NVIDIA, the situation is entirely different.
Regardless of whether a model is closed-source or open-source, as long as it requires running AI, it ultimately needs GPUs. The more popular the models, the more developers there are, and the broader the application scenarios, the greater the demand for computing power—and the better NVIDIA's graphics cards sell.
By personally endorsing open-source, Huang aims to fan the flames even further: regardless of whether it's open or closed source, as long as everyone is developing AI, they will ultimately need to buy his chips.
Huang's previous absence from social media wasn't due to a lack of ability, but rather a lack of necessity.
Now, breaking a 30-year habit to create an account and post a public letter overnight signals one thing: the regulatory climate surrounding open-source AI has reached a point where he must personally engage in the debate.
Recently, the US has been actively debating whether to restrict open-source large models, citing concerns about security risks and potential misuse. Should strict regulations be implemented—such as requiring approval for open-source models or banning the release of high-parameter open-source models—the entire open-source ecosystem could be stifled, leading to a contraction in downstream computing demand.
This is a significant concern for NVIDIA. If open-source is tightly controlled, NVIDIA's core computing business would lose a major area for growth.
Therefore, Huang's move serves both to voice an opinion and to take a stand: an open ecosystem is essential for sustaining US leadership in AI.
Looking ahead, it remains to be seen whether Huang will truly manage this account, posting frequently like Elon Musk, or if it will be a one-time tool account that goes dormant after the open letter. For now, that is unknown.
In the end, what do you think? Is Huang's personal endorsement of open-source aimed at the future of the entire AI industry, or is it purely about selling more NVIDIA graphics cards? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
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