President Donald Trump said “all necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered to NVIDIA” after the tech giant announced a $500 billion investment that would see it make AI supercomputers in the U.S. for the first time.
Trump said the same would be true for “all companies committing to be part of the Golden Age of America” as he seeks to draw more investment into the U.S.
Why It Matters
Nvidia’s move is a significant boost for Trump, who is arguing for global manufacturers to shift their production to the U.S. so they can avoid his tariffs and create more jobs and growth for the American economy.
Trump’s tariff policy has been under pressure from the markets. Sharp losses for stocks and a sell-off of Treasuries, driven by fears of a trade war-induced recession, helped push the president to pause his additional “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days to allow for trade talks.
What To Know
Nvidia said it commissioned more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test its specialized Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas—part of an investment the company said would produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the next four years.
The chip company in Santa Clara, California, has started Blackwell production at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. chip plants in Phoenix. Its supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas are Foxconn in Houston and Wistron in Dallas.
Nvidia’s AI supercomputers are expected to serve as the engines for AI factories, “a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence,” the company said in a news release on Monday, adding that manufacturing in the U.S. would create “hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming decades.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introducing new products during the keynote address at the GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18
JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12 to 15 months, Nvidia said. The company also plans on partnering with Amkor and SPIL, a company in Taiwan, for “packaging and testing operations” in Arizona.
Earlier this year, Trump announced a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence through a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.
The new entity, Stargate, was tasked with building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House.
The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.
Nvidia’s announcement comes as the Trump administration has said tariff exemptions on electronics, including smartphones and laptops, are only a temporary reprieve until officials develop a new tariff approach specific to the semiconductor industry.
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday: “NVIDIA COMMITS 500 BILLION DOLLARS TO BUILD A.I. SUPERCOMPUTERS, PLUS, IN THE UNITED STATES, EXCLUSIVELY. This is very big and exciting news. All necessary permits will be expedited and quickly delivered to NVIDIA, as they will to all companies committing to be part of the Golden Age of America!”
Nvidia founder Jensen Huang said in a statement on Monday: “The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time. Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency.”
Chris Caso, a senior analyst at Wolfe Research, told CNBC’s Squawk Box: “The tariffs coming in would just destroy a lot of demand. There’s no way that we’re going to produce, you know assemble, iPhones in the United States. So there’s no difference in behavior that would come as a result of that. So [what] we’ve been very concerned with [semiconductors] is the demand destruction that would come. If you tariff something coming into the U.S., the price goes up. Your iPhone goes up by $250, you’re not going to buy one.”
What Happens Next
Nvidia’s manufacturing projects in Arizona and Texas are already underway, with completion expected over the next four years. The ongoing test for Trump’s tariff policy is which companies follow Nvidia and with how much investment.
This article includes reporting by the Associated Press.