Chapel Hill (United States) (AFP) – Nvidia boss Jensen Huang on Wednesday urged G20 ministers to build more data centers to support the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, warning that leaders who brandish the threat of AI risk leaving their countries behind.

Published on: 02/09/2026 - 20:59

He was speaking on the second day of a G20 meeting in North Carolina, where the Trump administration brought together the big bosses of AI, who came to present their vision to the ministers of the twenty largest economies in the world.

“At the end of the day, what every country will have to recognize is that AI is infrastructure, just like water, roads, electricity, internet,” Jensen Huang said.

“Each country must build infrastructure to be able to support its own economy,” he added.

Nvidia is the company at the heart of the generative AI frenzy, which has propelled it to the rank of largest market capitalization in the world.

Its graphics processing units (GPUs), installed in emerging data centers around the world, are the essential components for training AI models.

These facilities provide "the digital intellectual capacity to support your researchers, your students, society, industries and start-ups", further underlined the manager, who had abandoned his emblematic leather jacket for a classic suit and tie.

Jensen Huang also dismissed the idea that AI would threaten jobs, one of the fears fueling public opposition to this technology.

“The idea that all jobs are going to be eliminated is simply absurd,” he told the ministers: “tasks will be automated, but the reason for our professions remains.”

Countries whose leaders “talk about technology with fear, with uncertainty” will suffer, he warned. "The worst case scenario is not taking advantage of it, being left behind. That's the worst of all scenarios."

He also called on governments not to over-regulate technology, echoing comments made the day before by Elon Musk: "Don't regulate on the basis of hypothetical and theoretical harms, but for real and concrete harms."

His intervention was moderated by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who described the boss, born in Taiwan and naturalized American, as a true “national treasure” of the United States.

“Your company is leading us down a path that none of us in our youth would have thought possible,” Mr. Lutnick said.

The meeting is being held in the midst of a revolt against data centers in the United States, which has become a major subject of the November mid-term elections.

Donald Trump castigated opponents of this infrastructure on Monday, predicting that they would end up “backward and poor” by playing into the hands of China.

© 2026 AFP

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