During a speech to mark the unveiling of his new AI Action Plan, President Donald Trump revealed that he suggested simply breaking up Nvidia, despite appearing to have never heard of the company or its CEO, Jensen Huang.
Trump made the remarks on stage at an AI summit in Washington, D.C., as he unveiled the United States' new AI Action Plan.
The President made reference and gave thanks to some of AI's top industry leaders, "And a very special thanks to some of the top industry leaders here, including somebody that's amazing," he said, alluding to Huang.
"I said, look, we'll break this guy up — this is before I learned the facts of life — I said we'll break 'em up," he continued. "They said 'very hard', I said 'Why?' I said, what percentages of the market does he have? 'Sir, he has 100%.'"
Trump continued, "I said, 'Who the hell is he? What's his name?' 'His name is Jensen Huang, Nvidia, ' I said, 'What the hell is Nvidia?' I've never heard of it before.
"I figured we could go in and we could sort of break them up a little bit, get them a little competition, and I found it's not easy in that business." Trump even claims he suggested putting together "the greatest minds" to work "hand in hand for a couple of years" to try and match Nvidia's success, upon which he says he was told it would take 10 years to catch Nvidia if Huang ran it "totally incompetently from now on."
Trump celebrated Huang and his achievements, noting, "And then I got to know Jensen, and now I see why."
Nvidia's stock price has rocketed in the last ten years, notably spurred by its success in providing hardware for AI computing across the industry. It recently crossed $4 trillion in market capitalization, despite having only reached the $1 trillion milestone two years ago.
As for Trump's new AI Action Plan, the 20-page document sets out three clear goals: accelerate AI innovation by cutting red tape and regulation, build up American AI infrastructure, and encourage the use of American AI tech among allies and friendly nations.
Despite the provisions for the proliferation of AI tech built by the likes of Nvidia, the document also alludes to the expansion of export controls and additional bans on component subsystems used in semiconductor manufacturing.
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