Neither Los Angeles nor New York, this will be the US city where Nvidia will manufacture its AI chips to avoid tariffs

Nvidia announced this week that it will produce its artificial intelligence supercomputers in the United States for the first time.

The tech giant said it has ordered more than one million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test its specialised Blackwell chips in Arizona and artificial intelligence supercomputers in Texas, part of an investment the company says will produce up to half a trillion dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next four years.

‘The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,’ said Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, in a statement. ‘Incorporating US manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and increases our resilience.’

Nvidia’s announcement comes after the Trump administration said tariff exemptions on electronics such as smartphones and laptops are only temporary relief until officials develop a new tariff approach specific to the semiconductor industry.

White House officials, including President Donald Trump himself, spent Sunday downplaying the significance of exemptions that reduce but do not eliminate the effect of US tariffs on imports of popular consumer devices and their key components.

‘They are exempt from reciprocal tariffs, but they are included in the semiconductor tariffs, which will probably go into effect in the next month or two,’ US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

Nvidia announced on its website that it has started Blackwell production at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s chip plants in Phoenix. The Santa Clara, California-based chip company is also building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, along with Foxconn in Houston and Wistron in Dallas.

Nvidia’s AI supercomputers will serve as engines for AI factories, ‘a new type of data centre created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence’, the company said, adding that manufacturing in the US will create ‘hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security in the coming decades’.

Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12 to 15 months, according to Nvidia. The company also plans to partner with Taiwan’s SPIL and Amkor for packaging and test operations in Arizona.

In a statement on Monday, the White House called Nvidia’s move ‘the Trump effect in action.’

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