The meeting between President Donald Trump and Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia Corp., took place at the White House on Friday afternoon. The chip giant has been under scrutiny since DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, made a major impact.
Huang’s visit is another example of how Big Tech CEOs are reaching out to Trump. Last Monday, the president was sworn in by top executives from Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) (GOOGL), and Meta Platforms Inc. (META). Prior to the start of Trump’s presidency, business executives also visited his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and organized donations to his inaugural fund.
MarketWatch was informed by a source close to the Friday meeting that it had been scheduled for some time in order to discuss AI policy and the objectives of the Trump administration. This individual noted that the meeting wasn’t organized in the immediate aftermath of DeepSeek’s explosive growth.
“We were grateful for the chance to speak with President Trump about AI policy and semiconductors. After the meeting, an Nvidia representative told MarketWatch, “Jensen and the president talked about how important it is to strengthen U.S. technology and AI leadership.”
During a lengthy Q&A session with reporters, Trump said that he and Huang “had a meeting, it was a good meeting.” “Eventually, we’re going to put tariffs on chips,” the Trump continued. He didn’t go into detail.
“I had never met him, but he’s a wonderful gentleman. Regarding the Nvidia CEO, the president remarked, “He’s the biggest in the world in terms of chips.”
Nvidia (NVDA), a leading supplier of AI chips, saw its stock fall 17% on Monday due to concerns that DeepSeek’s ability to create an AI model at a reasonable price may reduce demand for Nvidia’s goods. Although it made some progress, the stock closed the week down about sixteen percent.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is overseen by Republican and Democratic members, has also criticized Nvidia for their involvement with DeepSeek. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the panel’s top Democrat, and Rep. John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan who chairs the committee, wrote a letter and issued a news release this week urging the Trump administration to “swiftly strengthen export controls on the technology behind DeepSeek’s model,” claiming the Chinese startup “made extensive use of Nvidia’s H800 chip, the first chip that Nvidia designed specifically to fall outside U.S. export controls.”
DeepSeek is “an excellent AI advancement,” according to Nvidia this week, while Trump has called it a “wake-up call” for American industry.
