Speaking at the launch of his administration’s new AI Action Plan, President Donald Trump revealed that he had previously floated the idea of breaking up Nvidia, before going on to claim he had never heard of the chip giant or its CEO, Jensen Huang, when making the suggestion.

Trump made the comments at the AI summit in Washington, D.C. yesterday (June 23) following the publication of the AI Action Plan, which makes more than 90 Federal policy suggestions, mostly related to model development and regulation, while also calling for streamlined data center permitting.

"I said, look, we'll break this guy up — this is before I learned the facts of life — I said we'll break 'em up," Trump recalled from the stage. "They said 'very hard', I said 'Why?' I said, what percentages of the market does he have? 'Sir, he has 100 percent.”

The president continued: "I said, 'Who the hell is he? What's his name?' 'His name is Jensen Huang, Nvidia,' I said, 'What the hell is Nvidia?' I've never heard of it before.”

Earlier this month, Nvidia became the first ever company to hit a $4 trillion valuation. The company’s valuation hit $2 trillion for the first time in February 2024, and $3 trillion four months later.

It’s unclear when Trump first floated the idea or how exactly he envisioned splitting up the company, but he said he made the suggestion because he “figured we could go in and we could sort of break them up a little bit, get them a little competition, and I found it's not easy in that business."

Trump went on to claim he also suggested putting together "the greatest minds" to work "hand in hand for a couple of years" to recreate Nvidia’s success, but was told that even if Huang ran the GPU giant "totally incompetently from now on,” it would still take a decade for Trump’s proposed semiconductor supergroup to catch up.

“And then I got to know Jensen, and now I see why,” Trump said, adding: “What a job you’ve done.”

Last week, the Trump administration reversed course on a previous decision to impose additional restrictions on exports of H20 chips to China. Following the announcement, Nvidia said Huang “met with President Trump and US policymakers, reaffirming Nvidia’s support for the Administration’s effort to create jobs, strengthen domestic AI infrastructure and onshore manufacturing, and ensure that America leads in AI worldwide.”

However, that was not the first time Huang had sought to engage with the Trump administration regarding its chip strategy. Following Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on semiconductors manufactured outside the US, Nvidia announced plans to produce AI supercomputers 'entirely' in the US, saying it would work with its manufacturing partners to commission more than one million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test Blackwell GPUs in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas.

Earlier in the day, Huang delivered his own speech, during which he said: “America’s unique advantage that no other country can possibly have is President Trump,” Huang said.