Protesters heckle Huang in Berlin over Nvidia chips in Russian drones

Protesters interrupted Jensen Huang’s keynote at Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference on Wednesday, asking what the company is doing about Nvidia chips reported in Russian drones. Security staff led them out, and Nvidia’s chief executive carried on with his talk.

The protesters stood on chairs and held up a banner with a Greenpeace logo. It told Nvidia to “clean up your dirty business”, Stephen Warwick reported for Tom’s Hardware, citing videos shared by attendees. Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and DatacenterDynamics also reported the interruption. DCD said staff took the banner away.

“Jensen, what about the technology that was found in Russian drones? Those were Nvidia chips. What are you doing about that?” one protester called out, according to Tom’s Hardware.

A protester also asked Huang about “environmental destruction”, Tom’s Hardware and DCD reported. Neither Greenpeace Germany nor Greenpeace International had published a statement about the protest by Wednesday afternoon.

What Huang said

The interruption came about 20 minutes into Huang’s talk, while he was showing Nvidia’s Vera Rubin hardware, according to Nvidia’s livestream. He told security staff to go easy on the protesters.

“Give her a chance. Everybody has a chance to say something,” Huang said, as DCD reported.

“All important issues, but let me get through my keynote,” he said as the protesters were led out.

He then went back to his presentation. It covered Nvidia’s OpenShell software for AI agents, new data centre designs and a reference humanoid robot. Nvidia’s own live blog of the keynote does not mention the interruption. Last week, Nvidia set out plans for $2B in European deals.

The chips in question

Ukraine has said Nvidia’s Jetson Orin modules were found in Russian weapons used against it. Tom’s Hardware has reported Ukrainian claims that a Jetson chip sat in Russia’s S-71 “Monochrome” cruise missile. In August, it reported that forensic teams found Jetson Orin modules in a Russian AI drone that killed three civilians in Ukraine.

Sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine bar it from buying such hardware, DCD reported. Nvidia responded to the earlier reports in a statement to Tom’s Hardware.

“Our Jetson Orin modules are consumer-grade products sold to students, developers, and startups for a wide range of beneficial applications,” Nvidia told Tom’s Hardware at the time.

Nvidia also said it does not sell the chips in Russia and did not design them for military use. It said it cannot track the resale of used Jetson chips. In August, Taiwan indicted an Nvidia manager over chips shipped to China.

Greenpeace and Nvidia

Greenpeace has campaigned against Nvidia before. In March, Greenpeace USA drove a billboard truck around Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose, calling on the company to power its supply chain with wind and solar, Greenpeace said. Greenpeace East Asia says Nvidia’s supply chain emissions more than doubled in three years.

This month, Greenpeace activists also boarded a Woodside gas platform off Australia. GTC Berlin runs until Thursday.