SHERMAN, Texas (AP) — Jensen Huang Nvidia Inc. Manufactured computer chips that revolutionized artificial intelligence. He’s now betting that augmented AI can revive American manufacturing and push past the limitations facing science and society.
That vision may depend on breaking ground on a factory an hour north of Dallas.
Nvidia on Tuesday officially announced plans for a major upgrade to its AI infrastructure as part of a $2 billion investment. Partnership with factory owner Coherent. The factory will produce materials for lasers that transmit data between computer chips, allowing them to work more powerfully, faster and more efficiently as a single system, according to executives who discussed the technology before the announcement.
“AI factories are the infrastructure of a new industrial revolution,” Huang said in a statement.
The factory will be a fundamental test of whether AI will become a source of job creation rather than a technology that replaces workers, as Huang believes. It will be possible to write software, analyze spreadsheets, run assembly lines, and even drive cars with little human effort.
Mr. Huang led NVIDIA to become the world’s most valuable company, valued at nearly $5 trillion, and to look beyond chips to develop entire AI systems. Companies expected to rely on these systems to further develop their AI models could soon join the elite circle with valuations exceeding $1 trillion. How that wealth is spread, and the impact of technology, quickly evolved into fundamental debates about how America itself is structured.
AI is driving academic advances and creating the potential for rapid economic growth. But some voters believe there is reason to be concerned about electricity usage, potential job losses and newly discovered national security risks, even if those possibilities boost stock prices.
Changing approaches to AI
President Donald Trump’s administration, which once believed that light regulatory measures were essential to fostering the development of AI, has recently begun to reverse course. I put it Export restrictions on AI company Anthropic’s latest modelon Friday, the company cut off all public access to these models, citing security concerns.
Republican Trump signs order introducing new AI models voluntarily reviewed by the government. He also pondered government. own the stock This is to ensure that the public benefits from the expected windfall, even if it blurs the lines between the public and private sectors.
Still, President Trump is relying on the AI boom to spur economic growth, fuel future growth in manufacturing and construction, and push the stock market to new heights. He has insisted that Hwang accompany him on overseas trips, and recently had Air Force One pick up the leather-jacketed CEO on his way to Alaska. State visit to China.
President Trump has called Hwang “smart,” a “friend” and “awesome,” and has publicly recalled that he once considered breaking up Nvidia because of its superiority, but ultimately acknowledged that Hwang was a necessary ally.
Last year, President Trump told Taiwanese immigrants that he was “proud of you for coming to our country.”
Building AI creates jobs
Coherent’s factory in Sherman, Texas, which includes Nvidia as a major customer, relied on bipartisan government support. The Biden administration has approved $33 million in aid from the United States. CHIPS and scientific law To fund its construction, the Trump administration provided an additional $17 million in grants to ensure that key parts of the AI infrastructure are manufactured in the United States.
“The reason we are expanding the award and announcing it today is because we continue to expand our manufacturing capacity,” Coherent CEO Jim Anderson said in an interview. “With the huge demand for AI, we saw an opportunity to expand our capabilities even further than originally planned.”
Including construction workers, Coherent estimates the plant will create 1,000 jobs, approximately 550 of which will be in advanced manufacturing, engineering and technical roles. Anderson said the additional construction will double the plant’s floor space and quadruple production.
The plant expansion will increase production of indium phosphide, which is used to make lasers with the light intensity of the solar surface. Light pulses hundreds of billions of times per second through a fiberglass straw about the width of a human hair. This allows Nvidia’s computer chips to share information and work together as one system in what Huang calls an “AI factory.”
Power consumption is reduced by up to 50%, making calculations faster and significantly cheaper. The prospect of reducing the cost of tokens (the industry term for the use of AI) will facilitate expanding the scope and capabilities of AI.
In a paper published this month, economists Jessica Wachter and Jonathan Wachter noted that five major U.S. technology companies invested $380 billion last year as part of their AI efforts, and that total could nearly double this year. Based on that investment, they estimate the potential for rapid economic growth as AI accounts for more of the U.S. gross domestic product. Currently, AI accounts for approximately 3% of the economy, but that number could grow from 8% to 39%.
One Nvidia executive insisted on providing context to explain his company’s industrial strategy, emphasizing that the company is moving from developing computer chips to providing entire AI systems. This means further concentrating production within the United States, with chip manufacturing centered in Arizona and assembly processes centered in Texas, in order to establish a reliable domestic supply chain.
The executive said that because NVIDIA sells brains and neural systems to customers, the intelligence it generates can be applied to its own business in ways such as developing new products and identifying new savings and lines of business. This could allow manufacturers that rely on foreign suppliers to resume production in the United States and bring AI, previously accessed primarily from laptops, to the factory floor, where it could, in their words, “move atoms.”
For President Trump, this industry is essential to America’s greatness, and its potential is not lost.
“This is a great industry,” President Trump told reporters last week. “This is bigger than any industry anyone has ever seen. We’re leading China by a large margin. And whoever leads it will really be leading the world by a large margin. That’s how big it is.”
