Donald Trump: I wanted to break up Nvidia, before I learnt …
The US President Donald Trump wanted to break up artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia to boost competition, but abandoned the plan after advisors told him it would be virtually impossible.“Before I learned the facts of life, I said, ‘we’ll break him up,’” Trump said during an AI summit in Washington, recounting a conversation with unnamed advisors who warned breaking up the company would be “very hard.”Trump described discovering Nvidia’s market dominance through a revealing exchange with his team. When asked about the company’s market share, advisors told him: “Sir, he has 100%.” Trump’s response: “Who the hell is he? What’s his name?” Learning it was Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Trump admitted: “What the hell is Nvidia? I’ve never heard of it before.”
What made Trump change his stance on Nvidia’s breakup
The President explained his shift from confrontation to cooperation with the world’s most valuable company. “I figured we could go in and we could sort of break them up a little bit, get them a little competition,” Trump said. “And I found out it’s not easy in that business.”His advisors painted a stark picture of Nvidia’s technological moat, telling Trump it would take “at least ten years to catch him if he ran Nvidia totally incompetently from now on.” This assessment led Trump to conclude: “All right, let’s go on to the next one.”
Nvidia CEO wins over US President
Trump’s tone completely changed after meeting Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who attended Wednesday’s summit. “And then I got to know Jensen, and now I see why,” Trump said, praising Huang’s achievements: “What a job you’ve done.”The relationship has proven beneficial for Nvidia. Last week, the Trump administration allowed the company to resume selling H20 AI chips to China as part of a trade agreement, reversing previous restrictions. Nvidia recently became the first company to exceed $4 trillion in market value, benefiting enormously from AI demand. The Justice Department had previously investigated the company for potential anticompetitive behavior under the Biden administration.
