NVIDIA to Invest Half a Trillion USD to Build AI Chips in the U.S.
Amid the threat of rising tariffs, NVIDIA has announced that it will manufacture AI chips locally for the very first time. The company will partner with TSMC to bring production to U.S. soil and will spend close to half a trillion USD over the next four years.
NVIDIA to Push for Domestic Chip Production; CHIPS Act and Trump’s Trade Policies Seen as the Two Main Triggers
NVIDIA is pushing to move production close to home, and with rising demand, the company has stated that it has started production at TSMC’s Arizona fab. It has allocated close to a million square feet to manufacture its Blackwell chips in Arizona and build AI supercomputers in Texas.
With rising demand for its AI products, NVIDIA has stated that it will build three AI supercomputer manufacturing plants, in Texas, Dallas, and Houston, with the help of partners like Foxconn and Wistron. For both of the latter, manufacturing is expected to move to mass production within the next 12 to 15 months.
With the timing of this statement, it’s natural to associate the move with Trump’s tariff policies, but NVIDIA has already been in talks with TSMC for producing its Blackwell chips at the Arizona facility. Reports from as early as 2024 seem to indicate that the chipmaking giant was in talks with NVIDIA to handle front-end production in the U.S., with packaging still in Taiwan, due to a lack of capacity locally.
TSMC’s Arizona project was backed by the CHIPS Act of 2022, with close to $6.6 billion in funding. As for NVIDIA, it is working to bring better clarity and “resilience” to its supply chain. Trump’s “America First” push has no doubt poured huge amounts of funding into domesticating local manufacturing.
Like NVIDIA, Apple also pledged close to half a trillion USD in stateside spending, earlier this February, to strengthen the country’s independence in domestic semiconductor production.
This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.
