Nvidia dips its toes further into the 'American-made' waters

• Nvidia has made its manufacturing debut in the US and plans to expand its presence.
• The chipmaker announced it plans to "build and test NVIDIA Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas."
• CEO Jensen Huang recently visited with Trump.

Nvidia is going (partially) American-made.

The company announced on Monday that it planned to begin manufacturing some of its products in the US for the first time.

Nvidia said it's already begun production of Blackwell chips at TSMC's facilities in Phoenix while the company works to construct "supercomputer manufacturing plants" in Texas — partnering with Foxconn in Houston and Wistron in Dallas.

Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, is a partner and a customer of Nvidia's. The firm, most known for its role in Apple's supply chain, has had on-again, off-again expansion projects in Wisconsin and Ohio and has been working with Nvidia on domestic Blackwell production since last year.

Wistron, another Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, also uses Nvidia technology in its factories.

Nvidia said mass production at the Texas plants should begin within the next year or so.

"Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL," its announcement said.

Amkor, an American firm, assembles and tests semiconductors. And SPIL, or Siliconware Precision Industries Co., is a Taiwanese packaging and testing firm.

Most semiconductors were already exempted from Trump's round of "Liberation Day" tariffs, levies that he has since largely backed away from with a 90-day pause, with the exception of duties on Chinese imports. And perhaps thanks to Nvidia CEO' Jensen Huang's political maneuvering at Mar-a-Lago, the administration has also avoided further export controls on the company's H20 AI chip, which was tailor-made to comply with Biden-era restrictions on the performance of hips sold to China.

Sparing chips alone, though, wouldn't have been enough to insulate data centers as the AI "ecosystem" requires more than chips to function and grow.

And Trump said over the weekend that semiconductors will ultimately not escape tariffs, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick promising new duties in "a month or two."

Huang has previously said that Nvidia has been preparing to "manufacture onshore" and that its supply chain remains "agile."

"We are now running production silicon in Arizona," Huang said last month at the company's annual GTC conference. "And so, we will manufacture onshore. The rest of the systems, we'll manufacture as much onshore as we need to."

Now, it's the US's turn to see production of the "engines of the world's AI infrastructure," Huang said in Monday's announcement. Ramping to production of Blackwell chips at scale will take 12-15 months, the company said.

"Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency," Huang said.