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Nvidia will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on chips and other electronics manufactured in the US over the next four years, its chief executive has said, as the company tilts its supply chain back from Asia in the face of Donald Trumpโs tariff threats.
The huge spending projection from the worldโs most valuable semiconductor group follows multibillion-dollar US investment plans announced by other technology companies including Apple, as the impact of Trumpโs โAmerica Firstโ trade policies ripples through the global economy.
โOverall, we will procure, over the course of the next four years, probably half a trillion dollars worth of electronics in total,โ Jensen Huang, Nvidiaโs chief executive and co-founder, told the Financial Times. โAnd I think we can easily see ourselves manufacturing several hundred billion of it here in the US.โ
In a wide-ranging interview, Huang said the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker was now able to manufacture its latest systems in the US through suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Foxconn, and that he saw a growing competitive threat from Huawei in China.
This week, at Nvidiaโs annual developersโ conference, Huang unveiled the next generation of its AI chip, Vera Rubin, outlining his plan to build clusters of millions of interconnected chips in giant data centres that will require a vast power supply.
Huang said he believed the Trump administration could accelerate the development of Americaโs AI industry. โHaving the support of an administration who cares about the success of this industry and not allowing energy to be an obstacle is a phenomenal result for AI in the US,โ he said.
This month, TSMC announced a $100bn investment in chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona, which came in addition to a $65bn investment agreed under the Biden administration.
Nvidiaโs latest Blackwell systems are now being produced in the US, said Huang. โTSMC investing in the US provides for a substantial step up in our supply chain resilience.โ
In recent years, Americaโs biggest technology companies, including Nvidia and Apple, have become overwhelmingly reliant on TSMCโs cutting-edge chipmaking facilities in Taiwan.
That dependency has been clouded by the growing threat of aggression by China โ which claims Taiwan as part of its territory โ as well as the Trump administrationโs threats of tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors. Taiwan also faces an ever-present risk of earthquakes.
โThe most important thing is to be prepared,โ said Huang. โAt this point, we know that we can manufacture in the US, we have a sufficiently diversified supply chain.โ If any disaster were to threaten production in Taiwan, he said, โit will be uncomfortable but it should be OKโ.
The US has clamped down on exports of Nvidiaโs market-leading chips that are used to train and run the most advanced AI models, with the industry decrying a Biden-era set of more expansive export controls scheduled to come into force in May.
At the same time, Chinese chipmakers have been prevented from buying advanced chipmaking equipment such as ASMLโs lithography machines.ย
But while Nvidia still makes billions of dollars in revenue from China, it has faced resurgent competition from Huawei, whose Ascend AI chips have made advances recently.
โHuawei is the single most formidable technology company in China,โ said Huang. โThey have conquered every market theyโve engaged.โ US-led efforts to constrain the Chinese tech conglomerate have been โdone poorlyโ given Huaweiโs continued success.
โI think that their presence in AI is growing every single year,โ he said. โWe canโt assume that they are not going to be a factor.โ
Intel, the only US company that can in theory manufacture leading-edge chips similar to Nvidiaโs, has faced serious challenges with its foundry business. A leadership vacuum at Intel was resolved last week when Lip-Bu Tan was named as chief executive.ย
Huang denied reports that Nvidia was involved in discussions to form a consortium with the likes of TSMC to invest in Intel and stopped short of committing to using its US chipmaking services as part of that onshoring.
โWe evaluate their foundry technology on a regular basis, and we are ongoing in doing that,โ he said, adding that Nvidia was also looking at Intelโs chip packaging services. โWe look for opportunities to be a customer of theirs.โ
โI have every confidence that Intel has the ability to do it,โ said Huang, referring to Intelโs ability to be competitive in advanced chip technologies.
He added that the โsuccess and welfare of Intelโ was important. โBut it takes a while to convince yourself and each other that a new supply chain ought to get built up.โ
