Trump calls Nvidia CEO on stage, puts AI fears on speakerphone and calls them a "hoax"
Trump called Jensen Huang during the All-In Summit in Los Angeles and was put on speakerphone, using the surprise exchange to dismiss concerns about AI risks and argue that slowing the industry could play into China’s hands.
Donald Trump has reiterated his view that there is no reason to fear artificial intelligence, this time making his point in an unusual way. With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaking on stage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday, Trump called the tech executive and was put on speakerphone.
“I’m telling you, it’s all a hoax,” Trump said. “The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy.”
Trump has inserted himself into the increasingly heated debate over artificial intelligence and whether companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are developing increasingly powerful systems that could pose a threat to humanity. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for the industry to intentionally slow the pace of AI development, winning support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Trump has strongly rejected those calls. In a series of posts on Truth Social, he described people concerned about AI and data centers as “Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause” and said he saw no need for additional AI regulation. He also described recent concerns about AI as “a hoax” and “a scam,” arguing that calls to slow construction are being made because the U.S. is currently leading other countries in the pace of data center development.
After Huang put Trump on speakerphone on Monday, the president described data centers as the “oil of the next 20, 25 years.”
Trump also joked about Huang’s inability to put the call on speakerphone, saying that the Nvidia CEO “can develop the most complex computer chip that nobody can copy, but he can’t figure out how to put me on speaker.”
Trump praised the construction of AI data centers, which are being filled with Nvidia’s graphics processing units. While Trump and Huang have appeared together publicly several times during the president’s second term, Monday’s phone call further highlighted their close relationship and the centrality of AI to the U.S. economy, even as other policymakers call for greater regulation.
“I’m with you all the way,” Trump told Huang.
Those opposing data center construction are “playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen,” Trump said, adding that those forces could include China.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Trump said.
“You’re right,” Huang replied. “We’re not going to let that happen, sir.”
Trump also returned to his broader argument about the stakes of the AI race, saying that “whoever wins in AI wins at everything.” Huang responded: “We will ensure that everyone in the U.S. wins the AI race, every industry, every state, and all the people.”
Chamath Palihapitiya, one of the co-hosts of the summit, later described the exchange on X as “surreal.”
