Nvidia's Huang backs Trump's dismissal of AI-slowdown calls

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was onstage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday morning when he took a call he couldn’t send to voicemail: President Donald Trump. Huang put the president on speaker so the crowd — including All-In hosts and tech investors Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis, along with White House advisers David Friedberg and David Sacks — could listen in.

Before the call, Huang and the All-In hosts had been discussing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI.” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have said publicly they agree with Amodei, while Huang’s views have diverged. On the call, Trump argued that AI-safety warnings play into the hands of people who don’t want to see the industry succeed — “That could be political people. It could also be China. And we’re not going to let that happen. It’s a hoax,” Trump said, drawing applause from the crowd as Huang replied, “You’re right. We’re not going to let that happen, sir.”

Trump and allies including Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan have argued that growing opposition to data center construction is part of an international campaign to slow American economic growth. But the source of public concern looks more straightforward: recent Gallup polling shows seven in 10 Americans oppose data center construction in their area, with more than 50% of respondents citing the effect on environmental resources and about 20% citing concerns over cost-of-living increases and quality of life.

Trump told Huang the administration still plans to proceed carefully. “We have to be a little bit careful … We have to do things and we have to do them prudently, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop an industry,” he said, adding that he hadn’t previously known how Huang felt about the safety debate but was glad to find they agreed.

Why it matters

A sitting president publicly aligning with Nvidia against a rival AI lab’s safety warnings signals the administration’s posture on AI policy is set to favor continued infrastructure buildout over calls for a development slowdown.