When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took the stage at the All-In conference in Los Angeles on Monday, the audience expected the usual talk about AI chips and data centers. What they did not expect was a live phone call from President Donald Trump — and what Huang used to answer it.
Huang was handed Apple's unreleased foldable phone, a device that will not hit stores for another five weeks and carries a $1,999 price tag. Taking a call from the president on unreleased hardware is, as TechCrunch noted, "not a bad flex." It also carries a quiet irony: a decade after Apple stopped putting Nvidia hardware in its own devices, Apple now needs Nvidia enough to run part of Apple Intelligence on Nvidia chips.
The conversation itself centered on AI safety, with Trump and Huang broadly agreeing that fears about AI represent what Trump called a "hoax." Trump argued the real beneficiaries of AI panic are China and "political people," calling AI "bigger than the internet" and too significant to slow down.
Whether Huang genuinely shares that view or simply is not in a position to disagree is an open question. Nvidia's business model depends heavily on AI labs purchasing ever-larger quantities of chips, making public skepticism about AI safety a complicated position for the company's CEO.
