President Trump discussed his AI Action Plan at an AI summit in Washington, D.C. recently. There, he commended AI leaders and discussed challenges related to the development and management of artificial intelligence.
"And a very special thanks to some of the top industry leaders here, including somebody that's amazing," said Trump, referencing NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
He later discussed potential actions the United States government could take relating to NVIDIA:
"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'... They said 'very hard', I said 'Why?' I said, what percentages of the market does he have? 'Sir, he has 100%.'"
He later added:
"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."
The president also discussed competing with NVIDIA, explaining that his advisors said it would take 10 years to catch up if Huang ran NVIDIA "totally incompetently."
President Trump's remarks about NVIDIA and Huang start at the 14:08 mark of the video.
NVIDIA has seen rapid growth due to the advent of AI. It became the first $4 trillion company earlier this year.
When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it sparked an AI arms race. Competing models were released and several organizations pushed to integrate AI into products and services.
NVIDIA's value has surged as a result, hitting $2 trillion in February 2024 and $3 trillion in June 2024.
Microsoft is reportedly NVIDIA's largest customer, but Google, Meta, OpenAI, and other tech giants also rely on hardware from NVIDIA to train and power AI.
Windows Central take
When it comes to covering news, I do my best to remain professional and neutral. News pieces should present facts without editorialization, so I felt it was worth creating a clear separation between sharing the quotes and context of President Trump's statements and my personal opinion on the situation.
I understand the temptation to "dunk" on President Trump. To be honest, I believe he's said quotes worthy of being picked apart or made fun of in the past. He famously referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as "Tim Apple" once, which has certainly been joked about over the years. But I don't think this interaction with Huang is the same.
Trump praised Huang in his comments when he said, "And then I got to know Jensen, and now I see why." That statement refers to President Trump understanding how NVIDIA earned a dominant market share in the AI space.
My interpretation is that President Trump took the opportunity to tell a story that entertained his audience and praised Huang.
To be clear, I think there are times when President Trump needs to clarify whether he's being literal or metaphorical. I believe he has played off serious comments by later pretending he was joking or being sarcastic. However, I don't think this speech falls into that category.
