3d ago

Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

www.tomshardware.com

President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

During a speech to mark the unveiling of his new AI Action Plan, Donald Trump revealed that he suggested simply breaking up Nvidia, despite appearing to have never heard of the company or its CEO, Jensen Huang.

Trump made the remarks on stage at an AI summit in Washington, D.C., as he unveiled the United States' new AI Action Plan.

The President made reference and gave thanks to some of AI's top industry leaders, "And a very special thanks to some of the top industry leaders here, including somebody that's amazing," he said, alluding to Huang.

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3d ago

President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

www.tomshardware.com /tech-industry/president-trump-threatened-to-break-up-nvidia-didnt-even-know-what-it-was-what-the-hell-is-nvidia-ive-never-heard-of-it-before

35 comments

Having opinions on things you know nothing about is a proud Republican tradition.
- Which is EXACTLY why I think we should demolish Brunei. I don't know shit about 'em, but god damn do I wanna bomb 'em.
- Having opinions that all culminate in wrecking things while not bothering to understand any of it, particularly because of personal prejudices or ideology, is a proud Republican tradition.
guy is balls deep into crypto scamming doesn't know what nvidia is
That is an exceptionally clickbait headline. The article itself makes it clear that Trump is sharing an anecdote from when he first learned about Nvidia and how important they are to the AI industry.
As a sidenote, I don’t think Nvidia can be broken up. The way to break their monopoly and spur competition in this space would be to take away their patents and make them public. Then again, I’m firmly of the philosphy that patents are anti-competition and monopolistic by design and should be abolished entirely.
- I'm down with changing patents. But to get rid of them completely would be an absolute nightmare. Amazon would just open a manufacturing wing and put everyone out of business.
What does it even mean to break up Nvidia? Google, sure, they have a bunch of different divisions that are dominating separate industries. NVidia basically has one product amirite? Do you split them into a consumer GPU division and a data center GPU division? Split the consumer segment further for different specific games?
Yes they are way too powerful but the remedies are different.
- You take their patents away and make them public domain.
He’s shaking down companies and countries for bribes.
He’s a mafioso. Not a good one.
Lol... Man... Inadvertently messing with Gamers, the AI crowd, and the Crypto crowd. That's not exactly a demographic I'd want to be pissing off all at the same time 😅
- Honestly breaking up NVIDIA would probably be great for all 3 of those groups of done right. They're effectively a monopoly that has been leveraging their position to price gouge their customers for years.
  I don't trust Trump to actually do that though. He's probably just using this as a threat for bribe money.
  
  How would you do that?
  This isn't even a google where they are separate products with shared revenue streams and dependencies.
  Gamers, AI, Data Centers, and Crypto all use the same hardware. In fact, those gaming chips (and even a lot of embedded machine chips) ARE the same chips that go to super computers and major data centers just with more imperfections and thus lower peak performance.
  
  How do you break them up, though?
- Gamers rise up
Fucking wild that he’s bandying about threats to nuke a company that comprises ~30% of the US GDP, and doesn’t even know what it is or what they make or why it comprises 30% of the US GDP
Also fucking wild that one company comprises ~30% of the US GDP
monopolies are the new black I guess
Edit: apologies - it’s not 30%, it’s closer to 6.5%. Not sure where I pulled the 30 from, but that’s not accurate. Still, the fact that it comprises over 1/20 of the entire country’s GDP seems… strategically unwise, in an economic sense.
E2: I’m not an economist; I am conflating static and year-over-year values, which isn’t apples to apples
- Well it doesn't. 150 billion is nowhere near 30% of 30 trillion.
- Edit: apologies - it’s not 30%, it’s closer to 6.5%.
  You're still way off the mark, here. Market cap is the total value of their stock shares on the market at the current stock price. It has zero relation to GDP, which is meant to represent the value of actual goods and services produced. For that, you need to look at their actual revenues. In 2024, Nvidia had total revenues of about $61B. That's about 0.2% of the US GDP. Which is still massive, but nothing like what you're suggesting.
  
  Thanks, it's frustrating how people seem to constantly confuse a static value with a yearly flow.
  Same thing happens when talking about networth vs income.
- Wait, 30%?
In case anyone is unaware, it's because the NVIDIA CEO isn't white.
Of course he's never heard of it cos he's an uninformed ignorant idiot.
- and a demented rapist. You forgot that part.
Eh, fuck Nvidia. They don't care about their customers.
It is funny because there are a bunch much more monopolistic companies that could be broken up. I mean don't get me wrong they hold a power position but its not a situation were there is no real alternative.

35 comments