NVIDIA chief executive officer Jensen Huang is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Jan 20, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders.
Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Chinese New Year, according to a source familiar with the situation. He’s never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the source, who asked not to be identified because the plans have not been announced.
That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending co-founders or CEOs to the event. That includes Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon.com co-founder Jeff Bezos, as well as Tesla head Elon Musk, a close Trump ally.
A representative for Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia declined to comment on Huang’s whereabouts or whether there’s been communication with the incoming administration.
Huang said earlier this month that he’d be delighted to meet Trump and “do whatever we can to make this administration succeed”. But he had not yet been invited to the president-elect’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Huang said at the time.
Huang also said he expected Trump to bring less regulation. “I think that’s a good thing,” he said. “As an industry, we want to move fast.”
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Nvidia is facing a barrage of new rules and regulations in the final days of the Biden administration. The measures include steps to tighten access to advanced technology, such as Nvidia’s industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) chips, to keep them out of China’s hands.
Nvidia has chafed at new export curbs unveiled this week, calling them an “overreach” and warning that they could be catastrophic for the tech industry.
“As the first Trump administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition, and by sharing our technologies with the world – not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach,” Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice-president of government affairs, said earlier this week.
Nvidia and Huang himself have become the biggest stars of the chip world over the past two years. As the company’s sales have surged, Huang has crisscrossed the globe promoting AI technology, often in his signature leather jacket. Nvidia is the world’s most valuable chipmaker and only ranks behind Apple among all tech companies.
The chip industry will have a presence at the inauguration. Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas is one executive who plans to attend, according to a source familiar with his plans. BLOOMBERG
