Nvidia CEO and Cisco CEO discuss the global outlook on the AI arms race

In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins described a fervor from world leaders to compete in the race for dominance in the burgeoning artificial intelligence sphere.

“In no initiative and no foundational technology that I’ve ever known since the internet has the world and the leaders realized the importance of artificial intelligence to them,” Huang said. “And the reason for that is because no country wants to outsource and let somebody else advance their intelligence.”

Robbins claimed that the Trump administration wants the U.S. to maintain its lead in the A.I. arms race. Wall Street has worried that the president’s tariff policies could affect semiconductor imports that leading tech companies rely on. But Robbins said of the administration, “there’s going to be a lot of logic where they end up,” and that the government should attempt to better trade agreements.

“Based on the conversations I’ve had with the administration…they want to protect that lead, and they want us to win,” Robbins said. “I believe that their policies that they’re going to implement will, will ensure that that happens”

Cisco, which manufactures networking hardware, and Nvidia announced a partnership to bring AI technology to the enterprise with new infrastructure. According to Huang, AI “reinvented the entire computing stack, from compute, networking, storage, the operating system and the way you develop the applications on top.” However, the current enterprise AI infrastructure has the same for a long time, he continued.

“We need to go and rerack the whole world’s companies,” Huang said.

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Disclaimer The CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust holds shares of Nvidia.