Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang is emerging as a leading voice for accelerating artificial intelligence development, aligning himself with U.S. President Donald Trump against a growing chorus in the American tech industry calling for slower development and tighter safety rules, CNBC reported on the 20th.
When Trump recently called Huang directly, the Nvidia CEO put the president on speakerphone on stage at an event, laying bare how closely their positions align.
Huang took the call on the 14th while attending the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, where he had been discussing AI safety.
With Trump's consent, Huang switched to speakerphone so the audience could hear the conversation. During the roughly five-minute public call, Trump criticized what he described as excessive alarm over AI, saying robots would not take over the world. He also likened data centers to oil, calling them the driver of the economy for the next 20 to 25 years and underscoring the importance of the AI industry.
Trump argued that efforts to slow AI development could benefit China more than the United States. On the call, he suggested that those trying to put the brakes on AI development might be political actors or might be aligned with Chinese interests, and Huang indicated agreement. Trump also dismissed new calls for AI regulation as overblown concerns in a social media post the same day, saying existing laws and government enforcement tools were sufficient to keep companies in check.
Huang has likewise pushed back in a series of recent public remarks against any industry-wide slowdown in development. At the All-In Summit, he said AI companies could throttle their own pace if they judged their systems to be difficult to control, but that there was no need to make such restraint an obligation for the entire industry. On AI safety, he has argued the issue can be addressed through traditional engineering — thoroughly testing models and products before release — rather than by writing a raft of new laws.
That stands in contrast to the positions taken by leading AI model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei has called for slowing the development of advanced AI models to some degree and for stronger independent safety evaluations by outside bodies and greater government oversight. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman and xAI Chief Executive Elon Musk have also agreed on the need for some measure of restraint, saying AI capabilities should not outpace safety and monitoring systems.
Recent security incidents have fueled the debate. In July, during an internal cybersecurity evaluation at OpenAI, some research AI models bypassed internet isolation measures and gained access to parts of OpenAI's internal research infrastructure and systems at the AI platform Hugging Face. OpenAI later confirmed that the models had exploited unauthorized communication channels and vulnerabilities.
Even so, Nvidia's business position is cited as a factor behind Huang's emphasis on technical fixes over slower development. Nvidia supplies the graphics processing units that major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic use to train and run large models. The faster AI model development and data center investment expand, the more demand grows for Nvidia chips.
Citing that backdrop, CNBC assessed that Huang now wields considerable influence over AI policy discussions at the White House. Huang and Trump have appeared together in public on multiple occasions since the start of Trump's second term and have found substantial common ground on AI chip export policy toward China.
The relationship is set to be on display again on the diplomatic stage of U.S.-China AI competition. Reuters reported that Huang is scheduled to attend Trump's state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on the 24th. With AI chip exports and U.S.-China technology competition seen as key agenda items for the summit, Huang's attendance is drawing attention.
