President Trump on Tuesday reiterated Nvidia’s commitment to spend $500 billion to build out AI infrastructure in the U.S., promising to speed up the process for the chip giant and any other company planning to make large investments in the U.S. “This is very big and exciting news. All necessary licenses will be expedited and delivered quickly to NVIDIA, as will all companies committed to participating in America’s Golden Age!” Trump said in a Truth Social post. Nvidia’s announcement brings the total number of investment commitments by big tech companies into U.S. AI infrastructure to more than $1.6 trillion since Trump took office, as the tech community tries to navigate the potential dangers of the president’s trade war while staying on the right side of a malleable administration. Nvidia, for its part, does appear to be making moves in U.S. manufacturing, in part because of Trump’s chaotic trade policies, with erratic global tariffs affecting imports of AI servers containing its much-sought-after GPUs, or graphics processing units. When asked about Trump’s tariffs at its annual GTC conference in March, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company was “preparing, and we’ve been preparing for production in China.” Huang reportedly attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week, following which the Trump administration lifted new restrictions on Nvidia chip exports to China.
Nvidia’s move is the latest in a string of high-profile announcements by major tech companies about plans to expand investments within the U.S.
In February, Apple (AAPL) pledged to invest $500 billion over the next four years to expand its U.S. manufacturing.
TSMC (TSM) — which has most of its manufacturing capacity in Taiwan and produces the world’s most advanced chips — has pledged to invest $100 billion over a similar time frame. The company had previously pledged to invest $65 billion in building out its U.S. manufacturing capabilities using funding from the 2022 Chips and Science Act.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Oracle (ORCL), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and SoftBank (SFTBY) announced a joint venture called Stargate, in which the three companies said they would invest $500 billion in U.S. artificial intelligence data centers.
After Trump’s election, Microsoft (MSFT) said it would spend $80 billion to build artificial intelligence data centers. The company said “more than half” of that would be invested in the U.S.
Against the backdrop of Trump’s vacillating tariff policy, Apple’s U.S.-centric moves are once again in the spotlight. Just days ago, Trump said Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S., suggesting that the commitment stemmed from his approach to trade policy.
“They don’t want to be subject to tariffs,” Trump said in February.
However, given that Apple’s announced spending is in line with previous capital expenditures, it’s unclear how much of Apple’s commitment will come from new investments.
Nonetheless, Trump’s relationship with Cook has had an impact on tariff developments over the past few days. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued rules late Friday exempting consumer electronics, networking equipment, and computing products, including GPUs and servers, from reciprocal tariffs.
These include Trump’s soaring 145% tariffs on China, where much of Apple’s production still takes place. Trump boasted on Monday that he “helped Tim Cook recently.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, but the end result is that we will achieve greatness for our country,” he said.
But Trump also set the stage for tariffs on semiconductors on Tuesday — the Commerce Department opened an investigation into computer chips under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which gives the president the power to impose tariffs on imports deemed essential to national security. He also promised that most electronics would still be subject to tariffs.
“In our upcoming National Security Tariff Investigation, we will be focusing on semiconductors and the entire electronics supply chain,” he tweeted on Sunday.
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