President Donald Trump reportedly interrupted an Nvidia all-hands meeting on Thursday morning to call CEO Jensen Huang, according to three people who witnessed the conversation and spoke with WIRED.
Nvidia’s all-hands meetings typically feature Huang answering employee questions onstage at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, while thousands of remote workers watch via livestream. During Thursday’s meeting, Huang received a call on his cellphone and stepped away briefly to answer it.
Employees could clearly hear Trump’s distinctive voice through Huang’s onstage microphone, although they could not make out what the president was saying. Less than a minute later, Huang returned to the podium and resumed the internal meeting.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the reported phone call. Several employees were reportedly upset that the president had abruptly interrupted the company meeting.
Later that day, President Trump congratulated Huang in a social media post on Nvidia’s “incredible” quarterly sales and optimistic financial outlook for next year. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported second-quarter revenue of $96 billion, representing a 106% year-over-year increase.
Huang regularly travels to Washington to lobby government officials on issues affecting Nvidia, including chip sales and artificial intelligence infrastructure. He has also met privately with Trump in the past. The president’s direct call to Huang came at a significant moment for Nvidia. Earlier Thursday, the semiconductor company announced a new employee-funded political action committee that will donate to federal candidates as debate over AI regulation intensifies. Nvidia and the Trump administration do not necessarily agree on open AI models or restrictions on advanced chip sales to China. Bloomberg Law first reported Nvidia’s political action committee plans.
In related Nvidia news, the company has reportedly agreed to acquire Hugging Face, an open-source platform that provides AI datasets, models, and development tools to software engineers. The Information reported that the acquisition could be valued at more than $13 billion. The deal would likely require review and approval from US antitrust regulators, according to Business Insider.
Source: www.wired.com