'Not the opposite': Jensen Huang says Taiwan saved US chip industry

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has delivered a striking defence of Taiwan's semiconductor industry, saying the island “saved” America's chip and computing industries rather than taking them away. “Taiwan saved the American semiconductor industry, saved the American computing industry, not the opposite,” Huang told reporters during the opening of Taiwanese manufacturer Wistron's first US manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The comments carry particular weight because Huang sits at the centre of the global AI boom. Nvidia designs the GPUs powering many of today's most advanced AI systems, while Taiwan remains a critical part of the supply chain that makes those systems possible.

Jensen Huang: Without Taiwan, Japan could have taken the lead

Huang argued that the relationship between Taiwan and America's technology industry should be viewed as a partnership rather than a story of one country taking manufacturing from another. Without Taiwan's rise as a technology manufacturing powerhouse, he suggested, Japan could have taken a much larger share of America's semiconductor industry. Huang also said Taiwanese companies expanding manufacturing in America are doing so because it makes business sense. “Taiwan is doing it voluntarily because of its own wisdom, not because it's held a gun to its head,” Huang said. He described the relationship between American and Taiwanese technology companies as one built over decades of cooperation and trust.

A sharp contrast with Trump's 'stolen' chip claim

Huang did not name US President Donald Trump. But his comments offer a sharply different interpretation of how Taiwan became a semiconductor powerhouse. Trump has repeatedly accused Taiwan of taking America's semiconductor business and argued that previous US governments should have used tariffs to prevent chip manufacturing from shifting overseas. Taiwan has rejected that characterisation, arguing that its semiconductor industry was built through decades of investment, engineering expertise and the development of a highly specialised manufacturing ecosystem. Huang's argument goes further: Taiwan's rise, in his view, helped American technology companies remain competitive.

Nvidia's latest AI superchips are now being made in Texas

The setting for Huang's comments was significant. Wistron's new D1 facility in Fort Worth is a 324,000-square-foot manufacturing plant backed by a $700 million investment. The facility is already mass-producing Nvidia's GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Superchip in the United States. It is also expected to manufacture Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin Superchip. Wistron says the site has created more than 500 jobs, with plans to expand that number to around 1,000 by the end of 2026. For Nvidia, this represents something bigger than opening another factory.

The company is trying to build more of the physical infrastructure behind the AI boom inside America from chips and packaging to servers and complete AI systems.

And there is an irony at the centre of that effort. As Washington pushes to bring advanced technology manufacturing back to American soil, some of the companies helping make that possible are precisely the Taiwanese manufacturers that Huang believes America should be thanking rather than blaming.