Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has become a prominent voice against slowing down AI development, and this stance seems to be boosting the company’s stock this week.
Some of Nvidia’s biggest customers share similar opinions. On Tuesday, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg posted on social media that AI labs already have enough reasons to develop their models safely, without needing extra outside rules.
Nvidia shares went up almost 1% in premarket trading on Wednesday, continuing to bounce back from earlier losses. Earlier in the week, leaders from Anthropic and OpenAI had supported slowing AI development, possibly by adding more regulations.
Huang has quickly become the main business leader speaking out against outside intervention. On Tuesday, at a Salesforce conference in San Francisco, he repeated his view that safety is mainly an engineering issue. He said companies that are unsure about a product’s function, ability, or safety should not release it. He also believes that current market incentives are enough and that new laws or regulations are not needed.
Members of the Trump administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the White House’s AI adviser, publicly supported Huang’s comments. This came after President Trump called Huang during a public event on Monday, where the president also opposed slowing down AI development.
It might seem surprising for Nvidia’s CEO to take a public position that could conflict with some of the company’s biggest customers. However, Nvidia faces a bigger risk from regulations that could limit sales of its AI chips for training models, increase compliance costs, or make it harder for smaller companies to buy AI hardware and compete with larger labs. The most extreme case would be a ban on building new data centers, an idea some lawmakers on the political left have suggested.
Since Huang has direct access to the White House, Nvidia seems likely to keep its leading position in AI chip sales. For now, there is little concern that new regulations will seriously affect the growth of data centers.
