Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was interrupted by protesters while introducing the company’s next-generation AI computing platform at GTC in Berlin.
Roughly 20 minutes into the presentation, a protester stood on a chair, unfurled a banner and questioned why Nvidia chips had shown up in Russian military drones, while also accusing the AI buildout of causing environmental damage. The protest was organized by Greenpeace Germany, which projected the message “Nvidia, clean up your dirty business” onto the stage screen.
Huang let the protesters finish
As security prepared to remove them, Huang signaled for a lighter touch and allowed the protesters to speak. He said the issues were important, but asked to finish his presentation first.
Jetson Orin found in Russian weapons
In August, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence said it found an Nvidia Jetson Orin computing module inside a Russian S-71 cruise missile. The New York Times also reported that Ukrainian investigators found products from the same series in the wreckage of Russian drones.
The product is not one of Nvidia’s expensive GPUs used to train large AI models. It is a small civilian computer aimed at robotics and machine vision, designed to recognize and process images locally.
Nvidia says end destinations are hard to trace
Nvidia said Jetson products are not sold in Russia and were not designed for military use. The company added that after repeated resale through secondary markets, it becomes difficult to track where the hardware ultimately ends up.
Greenpeace presses Nvidia on supply-chain emissions
In a study released in September, Greenpeace said Nvidia’s disclosed supply-chain and other indirect carbon emissions had risen 725% since 2020.
According to the group, Nvidia has already matched its own operational electricity use with renewable energy, but not all East Asian suppliers responsible for manufacturing use clean power. Greenpeace called on Nvidia to extend its renewable energy target to the entire manufacturing supply chain by 2030 and to conduct independent audits of global distributors to prevent chips from entering military equipment.