Nvidia said on Monday that it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips in Arizona and Texas as part of an effort to move a portion of its production to the U.S.
The chipmaker said the production of its Blackwell chips has started at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona, and that Nvidia is building “supercomputer” manufacturing plants in Texas — with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. In Arizona, Nvidia is partnering with Amkor and SPIL for packaging and testing operations, the company added.
Mass production at the Houston and Dallas plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months, and within the next four years, the company aims to produce up to half-a-trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the U.S.
“The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in a statement. “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain, and boosts our resiliency.”
The announcement comes days after Nvidia reportedly narrowly avoided export controls on its H20 chip after striking a domestic manufacturing deal with the Trump administration. According to NPR, the H20, Nvidia’s most advanced chip that can still be exported to China, was spared thanks to a promise from Huang to pour capital into components for U.S.-based AI data centers.
Many other AI companies have leaned into Trump’s “America-first” approach to AI in bids to curry favor with the administration. OpenAI teamed up with SoftBank and Oracle for a $500 billion U.S. data center initiative dubbed the Stargate Project in January, while Microsoft pledged $80 billion to build AI data centers in its 2025 fiscal year, with 50% of that earmarked for the U.S.
Trump has strong-armed certain partners to get his desired outcome in recent months. He reportedly told TSMC that it would have to pay a tax of up to 100% if the company didn’t build new chip factories in the U.S.
Nvidia claimed its U.S. chip manufacturing initiatives could create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs and drive “trillions of dollars” in economic activity over the coming decades. But programs to ramp up the domestic chipmaking industry face formidable — and growing — challenges.
Retaliatory tariffs and trade restrictions from China threaten the supply of necessary raw materials to build chips in the U.S., and there’s a severe shortage of skilled frontline workers for assembling chips. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s moves to undermine the Chips Act, a bill passed in 2022 to dole out billions in grants to chipmakers, could deter future investments from semiconductor giants.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/
