Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a new job-spokesperson for the anti artificial-intelligence slowdown camp. It's probably the best thing he can do for the stock right now.
Some of Nvidia's big customers are also rallying against regulation. Meta Platforms' Mark Zuckerberg said individual AI labs already have the incentives to train their models safely, in a social-media post Tuesday.
Nvidia shares were up 0.5% in premarket trading Wednesday. The chip maker is still looking to recoup the losses incurred at the start of the week after the bosses of AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI spoke in favor of slowing AI development, potentially via more regulation.
Huang has rapidly become the corporate champion of the opposing camp, arguing there's no need for outside intervention. He doubled down on that position in an appearance Tuesday at a corporate conference hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco.
"Safety is an engineering problem...if you build a product or a service and you're not confident in its functionality, capability, or safety, then don't release it," Huang said. "The market forces are already there. We don't need any new laws. We don't need new regulations."
Huang's comments drew approval from the White House, with the Nvidia boss cited approvingly by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Trump administration's AI adviser David Sacks. That comes on top of President Donald Trump calling Huang on Monday during the middle of a summit appearance by the Nvidia chief to publicly push back against calls for an AI slowdown.
At first glance, it might seem odd that Nvidia's boss is taking a public stance that might put it at odds with two of its major customers. But the biggest risk for the chip company is regulation which would limit purchases of its AI processors for training new models, or lead to additional costs and deter smaller rivals from buying AI chips in an effort to catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic.
The nightmare scenario is a measure such as a moratorium on constructing new data centers, as proposed by left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders.
While Huang has Trump's ear, his company is well placed to keep its place as the top seller of AI chips without fear of regulation putting an end to the data-center boom.
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