Trump Phoned Jensen Huang Onstage in Los Angeles and Told 'Thousands' of Tech Investors That AI Taking Over Is 'a Hoax.' Two Days Earlier, Amodei, Musk and Altman Had All Called for a Slowdown.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was onstage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday when he was handed a foldable phone with President Donald Trump on the line. Huang put the call on speakerphone, and for roughly five minutes the president addressed a ballroom of investors and founders directly, dismissing the wave of warnings about catastrophic AI risk that has dominated the industry for the past week. "The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax," Trump said. Video of the exchange, shot by an attendee and later included in Huang's own podcast recording, spread across X within hours.

Trump told Huang the people raising alarms could be "political people" or "China," and framed the debate as a question of national competition. He called data centers "great," said they make people and states "wealthy," and described the buildout as "the oil of the next 20, 25 years, it's bigger than the internet." He added that the country should "be a little careful" and proceed "prudently," then told Huang, "I'm with you all the way." Huang, who sits on the president's science and technology advisory council, answered, "We're going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people." As the room applauded, he said into the phone, "Did you hear that? Thousands of people are clapping."

The call landed in the middle of an unusual public rupture inside the industry. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that the whole field needs to slow down and warning that a rogue AI swarm could seize control of the internet within a year. Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman both endorsed the call. Researchers at several major labs have resigned in recent days citing safety concerns. Nvidia's stock fell 3.4% on Monday and Micron 5.3% as investors weighed what a slowdown would mean for chip demand, while software companies rose on the same news.

Huang's own position was narrower than the president's. Speaking at the same event, he said apocalyptic predictions are "not grounded in science," a claim about evidence rather than motive. The distinction matters commercially: Nvidia's revenue depends on AI labs continuing to buy chips at the current pace, and any government-imposed pause would hit the company harder than almost anyone else in the sector.

Trump has spent the past several days making his position unmistakable. On Sunday, asked in Ireland whether AI should slow down, he said "whoever wins with AI wins" and blamed "negative forces." On Monday, he wrote on social media that a "STRONG AND SMART (HIGH IQ!) PRESIDENT" is the only guardrail the technology needs, and he met privately with Altman at a Republican midterm event to discuss the industry's growing power. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has said meetings with industry leaders begin this week.

The political cross-currents are unusual. On Tuesday in Washington, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon shared a stage to demand that Congress rein in AI, while the president was assuring the industry's most valuable company that the fears are fabricated. For now, the White House position is the one Huang heard through the speakerphone: build faster, and treat the warnings as noise.