Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells Trump ‘we’re not going to let [an AI slowdown] happen’

While speaking at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang answered a call from former President Donald Trump and chose to put it on speaker so the audience could hear. Huang, appearing with the podcast’s venture-capital hosts, briefly paused the program to project the conversation, even asking stagehands for an extra microphone to make the call audible. The phone exchange centered on recent calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to slow the pace of AI capability improvements. That proposal has drawn public support from figures such as Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, but Huang expressed a different view onstage. During the live call, Trump characterized those slowing efforts as playing into the hands of political rivals or foreign actors and called the idea a “hoax.” Huang replied that they would not allow such a slowdown, prompting applause from the crowd. Trump and some of his allies, including Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, have suggested that opposition to new data-center construction is part of an international effort to hamper U.S. economic growth. The conversation at the summit referenced public pushback over data centers: Gallup polling cited by the reporting found seven in ten Americans oppose building data centers near them, with more than half citing environmental-resource concerns and about one in five worried about cost-of-living or quality-of-life impacts. The back-and-forth at the All-In Summit underscores a division among prominent technology leaders over whether to curb the pace of AI progress, and shows a public alignment between a leading AI-chip company and political figures determined to keep infrastructure and development moving forward. The account of the call and related comments was reported by TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling.