Trump Goes Live With Jensen Huang Over AI Fears
Trump brushed off AI concerns during a live conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, while chip stocks and the iShares Semiconductor ETF came under even more pressure.
Key Takeaways
- Donald Trump called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live and said fears about artificial intelligence were a hoax.
- Nvidia shares fell about 3% on Monday, while Intel, AMD, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF also dropped sharply.
- The weakness in chips came as AI executives called for slowing the development of more powerful models.
President Donald Trump called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live on stage Monday and called fears about artificial intelligence a hoax. The moment drew a lot of attention at the All-In Summit, but Nvidia shares still fell, along with other chip funds that had already started the day weak.
Live Phone Call on Stage
Huang was in the middle of an interview when his phone rang. He put Trump on speaker, and the audience heard the conversation in which the American president repeated his familiar line about AI. Trump said data centers are good for the economy and that AI is bigger than the internet. Huang replied that Trump was right.
The timing stood out. Earlier that same morning, Trump had already brushed off safety warnings about AI on social media and said that a capable president is the only real guardrail. That once again put pressure on the debate over how fast AI companies should be allowed to scale.
Chip Sector Stayed Weak
For investors, though, the day was not about the stage moment but about the selloff in semiconductors. Nvidia traded around $211.81 Monday afternoon, about 3% below Friday's closing price of $218.29 (€189). Intel fell 7% and Advanced Micro Devices lost 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF also dropped 6%.
That move came alongside a weekend essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who urged developers to slow the next jump in model capability. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk joined the call to slow development. Microsoft had earlier introduced a Humanist AI code of conduct, which keeps human oversight at the center. At the same time, China has strongly opposed limits on AI development and instead is pushing for international cooperation.
The question of how AI infrastructure gets funded is also playing a bigger role in the market story. Nvidia's plans for financing platforms show that the chipmaker itself is betting on a broader capital market around data centers and computing power.
Why This Matters
For European crypto and tech readers, this matters because AI stocks and chip companies are increasingly moving with the broader mood around computing power, data centers, and infrastructure. Nvidia remains a key name here, too, because the company has a dominant position in GPUs that are widely used for AI systems. The debate over pace, oversight, and geopolitics can therefore ripple out into how investors view the entire AI chain.
