US firms must become ‘AI factories’, says Nvidia’s Jensen Huang

Nvidia CEO urges US firms to become AI factories, boosting domestic jobs.

All American companies will eventually need or become artificial-intelligence factories, integrated hubs of chips, software, design and networking infrastructure, creating skilled jobs and transforming industry, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told The Wall Street Journal.

“Just as we make physical cars today, or anything physical in the future, there’ll be a digital version of it,” Huang told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “So you need an AI factory to create the AI model that runs in the car.”

These so-called AI factories, which Nvidia has promoted as one-stop shops for data ingestion and intelligence output, rely on the company’s chips as their “engine.” “Electricity goes into the factories and tokens come out,” Huang explained, referring to the data units produced by AI models.

Huang made his remarks at the Hill and Valley Forum, co-founded by Jacob Helberg, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment. Helberg, noted for his tough stance on China, has urged firms to fortify supply chains against possible escalation with Beijing.

The comments arrive as the US tightens export controls on advanced Nvidia and AMD chips destined for China—a move that prompted Nvidia to warn of a US$5.5 billion charge. Huang declined to address those specific restrictions, saying only that policymakers “need to recognise that we should be accelerating, supporting, and promoting the American AI industry around the world.”

On Thursday, he is due to appear at a closed-door roundtable convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss export-control policy, according to people familiar with the matter.

Looking to the future, Huang forecasts a boom in US data-centre construction, creating jobs in construction, steelworking, information technology and networking. “Our country needs to acknowledge that trade craft is respectable work, and it’s necessary to build a country,” he said.

Nvidia also announced plans to manufacture AI supercomputers entirely in the US for the first time. “I’m delighted that the administration is really encouraging and supporting the industry with on-shore manufacturing,” Huang said. “If we don’t get good at manufacturing, we’re going to leave behind a giant industry, he added.”