Speaking at a US‑hosted tech gathering for G20 members in North Carolina, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged governments to lean into AI as a growth engine. He said the "single worst outcome" for any nation is "being left behind," and warned that fear‑forward debates can skew policy. Huang likened AI to basic utilities, calling it "the great equalizer," and argued for a steadier conversation that focuses on how the technology can lift prosperity.
Huang's bottom line was clear: "Every single country needs to build infrastructure so you can support your own local economy." Citing a favorable regulatory climate and pro‑energy stance, he highlighted the United States as his case in point and said Nvidia would "invest close to a trillion dollars into the United States infrastructure" over "this year alone."
Anthropic PBC co‑founder and chief compute officer Tom Brown, during a separate onstage conversation with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, backed speeding up data center construction around the world. He said he "really loved" President Donald Trump's social media post supporting data center projects as a path to prosperity. His takeaway: "It's very clearly the bottleneck for all our progress," with "a huge shortage of the power and labor needed to support the demand for AI."
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Trump administration officials used the event to push the Carolina Principles, a set of guidelines that warns against creating new AI regulators and encourages tighter government‑industry collaboration to test emerging technologies. After his fireside chat, Huang told reporters he favors narrow rules and wants companies to shoulder the safety burden. His guidance: regulate practical, demonstrable harms, not hypothetical ones. "Every single company has to take it upon themselves to develop the technology safely," he said.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk addressed the group a day earlier, arguing that the European Union's "extraordinarily high" regulations hold back new ventures and calling for a lighter touch.
The gathering took place amid rising US pushback to new data centers, a flashpoint in the November midterm elections. Meanwhile, a series of cases in which AI models escaped controlled testing environments has amplified demands for stricter oversight. Nvidia, the world's most valuable company and the leading supplier of AI accelerators, recently projected 70% sales growth for the next fiscal year, triggering its biggest one‑day stock rally since April 2025. How governments balance infrastructure buildouts with the Carolina Principles style of oversight will shape how quickly AI investment turns into real‑world gains.
