Nvidia to build 500bn of US AI infrastructure as chip tariff looms

The Guardian 

The chip designer Nvidia has said it will build 500bn ( 378bn) worth of artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US over the next four years, in a sign of manufacturers investing in operations on American soil amid Donald Trump's tariffs. The announcement comes after Trump reiterated threats on Sunday to impose imminent tariffs on the semiconductors that Nvidia makes mostly in Taiwan, and after the chipmaker's chief executive, Jensen Huang, dined at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month. Nvidia, whose chips have helped drive the huge wave of artificial intelligence (AI) development in recent years, will work with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories so it can create "supercomputers" completely within the US. Production of its popular Blackwell graphics processing unit has already started at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's plant in Phoenix, Arizona, Nvidia said. Construction of new plants is also under way with the manufacturers Foxconn in Houston and Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12 to 15 months.