Trump Calls Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Live Onstage, Dismisses AI Safety Fears as a "Hoax"

President Donald Trump placed a surprise phone call to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Monday, September 14, 2026, while Huang was speaking onstage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, using the live exchange to dismiss growing warnings about AI safety. The call, which lasted around five minutes with Trump on speakerphone, came just days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly urged the AI industry to slow the pace of development, a call that drew public support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

What Trump Told Huang On Air

Video of the call, shared publicly and reported by Bloomberg, CNBC and Fox Business, shows Trump telling the summit audience, "I'm telling you, it's all a hoax." He added: "The robots are not going to be taking over the world. That's not going to happen."

Trump praised the economic value of AI data center construction, calling it "the oil of the next 20, 25 years" and saying data centers "make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy." He also suggested that calls to slow AI development served the interests of unnamed opponents of the technology, saying critics were "playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen," and adding, "That could be political people, and also China."

Huang responded on speakerphone, telling the president, "You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir," according to reporting from Yahoo News and Quartz, which both reviewed footage of the exchange.

Separately on the same day, Trump posted on Truth Social defending AI development, writing that fears of AI "taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX," according to Fox Business's reporting.

The Backdrop: A Widening Industry Split Over AI Safety

The call followed an essay published over the weekend by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in which he argued the AI industry should slow the pace of frontier model development to manage safety risks. That position was publicly endorsed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk, two executives who rarely align publicly, according to Mediaite's reporting.

Trump's onstage remarks were widely interpreted by the outlets covering the event as a direct rebuttal to that emerging consensus among some AI executives, and as a signal that the administration does not intend to pursue stronger AI regulation. The New York Times, as referenced in aggregated coverage from Newscord, characterized the call as signaling that Trump backs technology executives pushing forward with development over calls for slower, more cautious deployment.

It is important to note that the characterizations of Trump's motives, and of the political significance of the call, come from journalists' analysis of the public remarks rather than from an explicit statement by Trump himself explaining his reasoning for making the call at that specific moment. Nvidia has not issued a separate written statement beyond Huang's remarks made live during the call, based on the sources reviewed for this article.

Why This Matters

The exchange highlights a sharpening divide in the AI industry between executives calling for a more cautious, slower approach to frontier AI development and a White House that has signaled it does not intend to restrict the pace of that development through new regulation.

With Nvidia's chips underpinning much of the global AI buildout, Trump's public alignment with Huang, delivered live in front of a major industry audience, underscores how closely the administration's posture on AI policy is tied to the commercial interests of leading AI hardware and infrastructure companies. The episode is likely to keep AI safety and regulation as an active flashpoint between industry leaders and policymakers in the weeks ahead.