Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may skip President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, a report claims. If the rumours are to be true, this will break away from a trend among US-based tech leaders attending the event. Unlike executives such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos, and Tesla head Elon Musk who is a close Trump ally, Huang will reportedly not represent Nvidia at the ceremony.
Nvidia is now the most valuable chipmaker globally and second only to Apple among tech companies.
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Meanwhile, the chip industry is expected to be represented at the Trump inauguration, with Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas likely to attend the event.
Why Huang may miss out on Trump’s inauguration
A report by the news agency Bloomberg citing a source familiar with Huang’s plans claimed that he is currently in East Asia, a routine trip he makes around the Lunar New Year. The source, who spoke anonymously, also noted that Huang has never attended a US presidential inauguration before. However, a representative of California-based Nvidia declined to comment on Huang’s plans or any communication between the company and the incoming administration.
Earlier this month, Huang talked about his willingness to meet Trump, stating he’d be “delighted to meet Trump and “do whatever we can to make this administration succeed.’”
However, at the time, Huang noted he had not yet received an invitation to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He also said that he expects that Trump would implement fewer regulations.
“I think that’s a good thing. As an industry, we want to move fast,” Huang noted
Currently, Nvidia is grappling with multiple new regulations introduced during the final days of the Biden administration. These measures aim to restrict access to advanced technologies, including Nvidia’s latest AI chips, to prevent them from reaching China.
The company has strongly opposed the new export restrictions that were announced this week. The chip maker labelled these restrictions as an “overreach” and cautioned that it could have major consequences for the technology industry.
Earlier this week, Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice president of government affairs, said: “As the first Trump administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition, and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach.”
