Nvidia bets $150B on Taiwan as Trump's plan to make US an AI hub backfires - Ars Technica

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In a splashy move that signals that Taiwan remains irreplaceable to the AI industry’s short-term and long-term goals, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced Wednesday that his chip company will invest $150 billion a year to make sure Taiwan remains at the “epicenter” of the “AI revolution.”

“This is where the chips come, packaging comes, this is where the systems are made, this is where AI supercomputers were created,” Huang said. “The number of partners we work with here in Taiwan, incredible.”

As Reuters reported, the substantial investments will be used to create a new Taiwan headquarters for Nvidia, which Huang expects will drive so much AI innovation that the partnership will cement Taiwan as “the world’s tech manufacturing hub for a long time.” That ambitious project will be operational by 2030, Nvidia anticipates, after breaking ground this year.

“Four years ago, five years ago, Nvidia was spending about 10, 15 billion dollars a year in Taiwan,” Huang said at a ceremony celebrating the launch of the company’s new Taiwan base. “Now we’re spending 100, going to 150 billion dollars in Taiwan each year.”

Nvidia is currently the world’s most valuable company, making history in 2025 after becoming the first company to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization. And Huang bragged that the Taiwan base will make sure Nvidia is “worth even more in three ⁠to five years.”

But Huang has so far not explained how Nvidia’s plans in Taiwan may potentially conflict with Donald Trump’s push to make the US the world’s AI hub.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment on this seeming tension.

Nvidia needs Taiwan HQ to meet demand

Last April, Nvidia started producing AI chips on US soil for the first time. The move seemed designed to appease Trump, who had been pressuring US firms to increase domestic manufacturing, a top priority of his AI Action Plan.

At that time, Huang said that “the engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” because “adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain, and boosts our resiliency.”

Over the next four years, he projected that Nvidia could produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the US—but it was hard to see how Nvidia could race to achieve that result when the company still relied on shipping chips to Taiwan for advanced packaging.

Now, Huang seems to be confronting that reality head-on, prioritizing more investments and deepening partnerships in Taiwan at a time when Huang claims that overwhelming demand for agentic AI is accelerating AI factory buildouts “at extraordinary speed,” The Guardian reported.

While the US investments will surely factor into Nvidia’s growth, it’s the Taiwan HQ that seemingly matters most.

Tech giants collectively plan to spend $750 billion on AI infrastructure this year, with “a significant portion” of that expected to “go towards chips for data centers,” the Guardian noted, and Nvidia needs a plan to keep up with that rapidly spiking demand. Then there’s also Nvidia’s new AI system, Vera Rubin, to consider, which Huang claimed would be a “generational leap” that’s going to be “kicking off the greatest infrastructure buildout in history.” Nvidia fears it will face supply chain constraints “throughout the entire life of Vera Rubin,” Huang said.

Perhaps to Huang, the Taiwan base looks like a lifeline for that and future systems.

Before Trump’s AI Action Plan rolled out, Nvidia had previously manufactured all its AI chips exclusively in Taiwan. So, the firm is well acquainted with the benefits of working in that ecosystem.

With its Taiwan HQ, Nvidia hopes to expand its partnership with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), while benefiting from close proximity to advanced packaging technology not yet available at TSMC’s US factories. And Nvidia can also “boost its alliances” with other nearby partners playing “key roles in the build-out of AI servers and infrastructure,” like Foxconn, Wistron, and Quanta Computer, Reuters reported.

For Nvidia, the focus appears to be on expanding the AI ecosystem to further its bottom line. Earlier this month, Huang told CNBC that Nvidia would be “aggressively” expanding its supply chain and suggested that the “first priority for its growing cash pile was supporting suppliers amid...