Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took an unusual step during a public appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, contacting former President Donald Trump by phone to counter growing anxieties about artificial intelligence. The conversation, which occurred during a panel discussion, aimed to reassure the public and investors about AI's stability and market value, especially as AI-related stock prices have seen a decline.
Huang's outreach came shortly after Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei published a blog post titled "We Must Pace the Frontier." Amodei advocated for tighter regulations on AI development, limits on unchecked progress, and a ban on selling advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. This stance was notably endorsed by figures such as Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman.
During the summit, Huang, whose company Nvidia holds a $5.1 trillion market cap, described Amodei's concerns as part of a "hoax" to an audience. "The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy, and it’s the oil of the next 20, 25 years," Trump stated via phone, as relayed by Huang. Trump further asserted that AI is "bigger than the internet" and that efforts to slow its progress are playing into the hands of entities like China, emphasizing that "we're not gonna let that happen."
The public relations maneuver appears to be closely tied to significant financial investments in AI data centers, estimated to be around $31.6 trillion. Public financial disclosures indicate that Donald Trump personally invested over $6 million in data center development in 2026 alone. For Nvidia, the increasing sophistication of AI directly translates to a greater demand for its GPUs, which provide the necessary "compute" power. A slowdown in AI advancement could jeopardize the value of these data centers and impact Nvidia's revenue.
The timing of these events is noteworthy. Amodei's essay was released, followed by the filming of the All-In Summit panel. In the subsequent days, Nvidia's stock experienced a 5.6 percent dip. Similarly, the stocks of the three largest RAM suppliers also saw a decrease following the circulation of Amodei's essay. This correlation between calls for AI regulation and stock market fluctuations highlights the financial stakes involved in the ongoing discourse surrounding artificial intelligence.