President Trump called into a Los Angeles technology summit to champion the AI boom, praising data centers as 'the oil of the next 25 years' and rejecting safety warnings as a hoax.
President Donald Trump phoned Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang while Huang was speaking onstage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday, commandeering a technology industry panel for roughly five minutes on speakerphone to deliver a blunt defense of artificial intelligence. The president dismissed warnings that AI poses a catastrophic threat, calling the alarm a hoax, and cast data centers as the engine that will drive American prosperity for a generation. The moment was captured on video by an attendee and raced across social media within minutes.
It was an unusual scene even by the standards of a president who has made technology policy a signature of his second term. Trump is not merely tolerating the AI boom that is reshaping the economy and the country's power grid. He is championing it, and he used a live call to say so in front of an audience of investors, founders, and engineers.
Huang, whose company has become the world's most valuable on the back of surging demand for AI chips, took the call mid-panel and put the president on speaker for the crowd. Trump did not hedge. "The robots are not going to be taking over the world. That's not going to happen," he said.
He framed the buildout of data centers as a national windfall, saying they "are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy." He went further, describing the facilities that house advanced computing as "the oil of the next 20, 25 years" -- a comparison that places AI infrastructure alongside the energy industry as a pillar of the economy. To Huang, he offered a simple endorsement: "I'm with you all the way."
Huang returned the sentiment. "You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir," he replied.
The president did not treat the safety debate as a technical dispute. He tied opposition to data centers and rapid AI development to foreign adversaries, warning that critics "are just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen," naming political opponents and China.
Earlier in the day, Trump had posted repeatedly on Truth Social attacking Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei by name, calling AI safety concerns "a hoax" and "a scam" and writing that the only guardrail the industry needs is "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT." He described resistance to AI and data centers as a "SICK conspiracy" that ultimately benefits China.
His dismissal stands in sharp contrast to the warnings that have fueled a bipartisan push for guardrails in Congress, where lawmakers in both parties have argued the United States must set safety rules without surrendering the AI race to Beijing. Huang sided with the president's skepticism without going as far, saying that "whistle-blowing is fine" but that predictions about AI's future are "not grounded in science."
The call landed on the same weekend that the AI industry's own leadership showed signs of fracture. Amodei published an essay Saturday urging companies to slow the pace of development, warning that recursive self-improvement and a recent AI agent incident had made the risks too serious to wave off. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Elon Musk each signaled agreement with the call over the weekend.
Nvidia sits at the center of that tension. The company's chips are the backbone of the data center buildout Trump celebrated, and Huang has become one of the most influential voices in the debate over how fast the technology should move. By taking the president's call in public, he aligned Nvidia with the case for acceleration just as some of his peers were urging caution.
After the session wrapped, All-In Summit co-host Chamath Palihapitiya summed up the moment in a single word on X: "This was surreal."
Trump made clear that his administration will not stand in the way of the industry's expansion. On regulation, he said no additional oversight is needed, adding that "we have to do things, and we have to do them prudently" but that doing so "doesn't mean we're going to stop an industry."
That posture gives AI developers and data center builders a powerful ally in the White House as states and federal agencies weigh grid costs, land use, and safety questions. It also sets up a running fight with figures like Amodei and the lawmakers who have joined the call for new rules.
The next test will be whether the White House converts the enthusiasm on display in Los Angeles into concrete policy. For now, the president's message to the industry was unambiguous: keep building, and expect the federal government to stay out of the way. Investors and state regulators will be watching to see how far that promise carries.
President Trump called into a Los Angeles technology summit to champion the AI boom, praising data centers as 'the oil of the next 25 years' and rejecting safety warnings as a hoax.
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