Technologies

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emerges as Trump’s top ally in AI safety debate

Jensen Huang’s position as the leader of the world’s most valuable company, has earned him Trump’s ear on the most important topics in AI.

With the debate about regulating artificial intelligence raging in Washington this week, President Donald Trump picked up the phone to call his top ally on the subject: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“The robots are not going to be taking over the world,” Trump told Huang, who’d put the president on speaker while on stage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday. Trump repeated a point he’d made on social media: that mounting AI and data center concerns are a “hoax.”

While other tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have cozied up to Trump during his second term, experts told CNBC that Huang is exercising outsized influence in the White House. He’s slated to attend Trump’s high-profile state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.

Nvidia has been powering the AI boom since before the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, supplying the graphics processing units used by OpenAI, Anthropic and others to train their models and run large workloads. Revenue surged to $215 billion in the latest fiscal year, up from $17 billion in 2021.

Huang’s position as the leader of the world’s most valuable company and the chipmaker at the heart of the AI boom has earned him the president’s ear on the most important AI topics.

“Trump just likes winners, and Jensen’s very good at speaking his language,” Samuel Hammond, director of AI policy at the think tank Foundation for American Innovation, said in an interview.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment, and White House representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Whether joining Trump for a candlelit dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, or closing a keynote by thanking guests for “making America great again,” Huang has learned how to appeal to the president. Trump and Huang have appeared together at least six times in public since the start of the second term, including trips to Saudi Arabia and the U.K., and a recent trip to China via Air Force One.

Huang is pushing for U.S. AI to move faster while some of Nvidia’s most important customers — namely OpenAI and Anthropic — are ramping up pressure on governments to regulate the technology as fears spread about its potential dangers.

An Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, said he quit his job earlier this month because he feared top AI labs are “gambling with our lives.” Coxon’s resignation set off a firestorm on social media, prompting calls for increased oversight from more than 20 members of Congress.

Concerns were already swirling after OpenAI disclosed a significant security incident in July, when two of its models escaped containment, accessed the open internet, and breached the online AI repository Hugging Face to get a better score on a benchmark test.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cited that episode in a bombshell essay a week ago, urging AI developers to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced AI models. Amodei encouraged companies to cooperate directly with the U.S. government, and reiterated his desire for “well-considered regulation of AI.”

Amodei’s “pacing” proposal was endorsed by other industry leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis, who agreed on the need for a slowdown and additional oversight.

‘Did no harm’

Huang took a different position.

In public appearances over the past week, the Nvidia CEO brushed off concerns about AI’s risks. He said that predictions of doom aren’t grounded in science, and that model developers are responsible for securing their products before releasing them.

The solution to safety concerns, Huang said in Scotland on Thursday, is “good old-fashioned engineering.”

“There were incidents, and those incidents, thankfully, did no harm,” Huang said.

Huang’s position is largely shared publicly by David Sacks, a venture capitalist who previously served as Trump’s AI and crypto czar. Sacks co-hosts the “All-In” Podcast, which produced Monday’s event that featured the Trump-Huang call.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on the same day as the summit.

Before the recent uproar over safety, Nvidia focused its Washington outreach on export controls.

Last year, Nvidia was pushing to sell its AI chips to restricted countries, including China, drawing sharp criticism from U.S. lawmakers.

Some members of Congress, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have cautioned that selling Nvidia hardware to China could threaten U.S. national security and narrow America’s lead in AI.

In December, Huang’s strategy paid off. Trump announced that Nvidia was granted permission to ship its H200 chip to Chinese customers, and that the U.S. would collect a 25% fee in exchange.

The H200 announcement drew intense pushback from both sides of the aisle. Huang declined an invitation from Warren to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in June. The following month, a top U.S. trade official confirmed that H200 sales to China were underway.

Profit motive

Nvidia and Huang argued that banning Nvidia exports to China would be against American interests, in part because such a move would spur the world’s second-largest economy and computing market to develop its own cutting-edge AI chips. The H200 is no longer Nvidia’s most powerful chip, as it has shipped two generations of its newer Blackwell processors in the U.S.

But Nvidia’s fate wasn’t entirely up to U.S. lawmakers, as China’s regulators mostly blocked imports of the H200 chips.

Nvidia’s clear profit motive leads some experts to say it takes the concerns expressed by model developers more seriously than those of the chipmaker, because the labs are the ones responsible for the actual AI technology.

“Nvidia is the most aggressive in terms of, let’s just make money,” said Andrew Yoon, a researcher at CivAI, a nonprofit warning about the dangers of AI. “At every turn, they are really trying to just make sure whatever happens is good for Nvidia’s bottom line.”

Nvidia’s ambitions in China will loom large during the state dinner on Thursday, when Trump, Huang and Xi will all be in the same room. The White House is also planning a meeting with major AI executives to coincide with the event, according to CNN. Other industry executives, including Altman, are expected to attend.

But Huang’s presence carries extra weight. During a House hearing on Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked if Trump understands the threat AI presents.

“I would just say the president is completely aligned with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia,” Bessent said.

WATCH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says safety is an engineering problem

Technologies

Apple and Meta team up to make Muse AI model run on Mac computers

Apple and Meta are collaborating to make Muse Spark Open easier to run locally on clustered Mac Studio systems, according to the companies.

Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg have clashed for years, but with John Ternus taking the reins at Apple

Technologies

CoreWeave credit default swaps hit distress levels as investors sour on AI debt

Signs of distressed deepened in CoreWeave on Thursday.

CoreWeave’s credit stress continued to spiral on Thursday amid a broader sell-off in AI-related names.

CoreWeave — a so-called neocloud company — has taken on more than $51 billion of debt and obligations to finance its AI infrastructure build-out. It’s now facing a rebellion from stock and bond investors as concerns mount about AI overspending and debt levels.

Yields on CoreWeave debt have continued to climb, with the yield to maturity on its 9.75% bond due in 2031 reaching 15.78%. Bond yields move inversely to prices. Meanwhile, the spread on its five-year credit default swaps, which are insurance against default, at one point soared above 1,140 basis points. It last stood at nearly 1,038 bps — a 16% week-over-week jump and 164% higher than a year ago.

Credit concerns are spreading into AI equities too. CoreWeave’s stock dropped during trading Thursday before recovering and closing 5.94% higher. The moved followed Wednesday’s 15.5% nosedive.

Other neocloud stocks were under similar pressure. Nebius also sank before climbing higher to close 1.29% and and Iren ultimately ended the day down less than 1%.

Anxiety about AI overspending is also spreading. For instance, shares of Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices sold off following a big sell-off in South Korean chip stocks. Micron closed up 1.87%, while AMD fell 1.5%.

While AI debt worries have been rising steadily, investors have suddenly grown skittish about the underlying finances of companies borrowing heavily to buy chips, build data centers, and rent out computing power.

Coreweave’s credit default swaps are one place to see that stress.

Credit default swaps are contracts where buyers pay for protection in case the borrower can’t repay its debt. The spread widening in CoreWeave’s CDS means investors view the debt as riskier.

The market is “basically saying ‘no mas’ to AI debt without operating cash flow support,” the Evercore ISI trading desk said.

A spread level of 1,000 basis points or above is generally a sign of credit distress, said Gavan Nolan, executive director of fixed income pricing at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

No one is questioning whether demand for CoreWeave’s services is real, since the company has contracts with all the big hyperscalers, Nolan said. The question is whether the cash flows will ultimately arrive.

“It’s obviously heavily negative free cash flow at the moment, and it needs that cash flow to arrive really to justify all the capex that it’s spending,” Nolan said.

‘Self-fulfilling prophecy’

CEO Mike Intrator dismissed the market moves on Wednesday, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.

“When you are building a new type of technology company there will be periods of time when the market misunderstands and acts irrationally,” he wrote. “We are confident in our backlog which more than supports all of our debt obligations.”

The backlog is over $100 billion, with around two-thirds of it with investment-grade counterparts including Microsoft, Meta, IBM and Caterpillar, Deutsche Bank said in a note Thursday. The firm reiterated its buy-rating on the stock Wednesday, calling the dislocation a buying opportunity.

“The problem is this kind of concern can prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and risks triggering broader issues in other AI-related names,” said Jim Reid, global head of macro and thematic research.

Domino effects may already be happening. Oracle’s five-year CDS spread also spiked this week. It was last at 282 basis points, a roughly 10% increase in one week.

“A downgrade from its BBB rating would risk pressuring IG-only investors into forced sales,” Reid said.

Technologies

Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria is leaving, will be replaced by Peter Rice

Netflix announced Bela Bajaria will be replaced by former Disney exec Peter Rice as the company’s chief content officer.

Netflix on Thursday announced Bela Bajaria will be replaced as the company’s chief content officer by former Disney exec Peter Rice, effective Oct. 26.

Rice most recently oversaw Disney’s cable channels, news programming and coverage of major sporting events.

“Peter is one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement. “I’m excited to welcome him to Netflix as Chief Content Officer as we continue to scale and deliver members more of the stories they love.”

Before Rice was at Disney, he held roles 21st Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures. Netflix in its announcement called him “one of the entertainment industry’s most respected creative executives.” In his new role, Rice will oversee the company’s global content organization, including scripted and unscripted series, film and live events.

″[Netflix has] shown again and again that they’re willing to take chances on distinctive voices and fresh ideas, and I’m excited to work with the team to help bring even more great stories to members everywhere,” he said in a statement.

Bajaria, who is leaving Netflix after nearly 10 years, most recently worked as the company’s global content team. She had been focused on the company’s live sports strategy, looking to create events out of buzzy games and tournaments.

“I’m incredibly grateful for everything she’s done to help Netflix entertain the world,” Sarandos said in a statement.

The announcement comes a day after Netflix instituted layoffs across its organization, eliminating approximately 6% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 jobs.

The media company will report its next quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

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