AI’s public image has taken a hit in recent days. After years of ambitious promises from technology companies, some industry leaders are now calling for a slower, more controlled pace. That change in tone has unsettled the investors financing the sector’s rapid expansion.
At the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, a discussion about AI regulation turned into an unusual effort to reassure the market. The event’s panel brought US President Donald Trump into the conversation to argue that artificial intelligence remains safe, valuable and economically important.
As reported by CNBC, Trump phoned Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang during an on-stage discussion of a recent essay by Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei.
Why the AI industry is asking for a pause
Amodei’s essay, titled We Must Pace the Frontier, called for tighter AI regulation and limits on the speed of unchecked development. It also advocated banning sales of powerful AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. The argument received support from both Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Huang, whose company was valued at a $5.1 trillion market capitalisation in the source material, was handed a phone during the discussion. He praised Trump while speaking to the crowd, saying they had been discussing the president and that Trump had “seen through” the complexity surrounding the issue.
Trump then addressed the audience through the phone. He described AI as almost a conspiracy, said China was pleased by opposition to the technology and insisted that “it’s all a hoax.” He added that data centres create wealth for individuals and states, calling AI “the oil of the next 20, 25 years.”
Trump also compared AI’s importance with the internet, saying it was even bigger, and argued that critics were helping people and political interests that did not want the technology to advance. He repeated his claim that the controversy was a hoax.
The financial interests behind the reassurance
The exchange looked less like a measured policy discussion than a public-relations exercise. Huang’s praise, the hosts’ enthusiastic reaction and Trump’s emphasis on the wealth generated by data centres all served to reinforce confidence in continued AI investment.
One explanation is financial exposure. Approximately $31.6 trillion has reportedly been invested in developing AI data centres. Public financial disclosures indicate that Trump personally invested more than $6 million in data-centre construction during 2026 alone.
Nvidia also has a direct stake in the expansion. More capable AI systems require more computing capacity, and that capacity depends heavily on the GPUs Nvidia supplies. In current financial language, “compute” refers both to the hardware resources used to run AI and to an asset whose value is expected to keep rising.
As AI models become more demanding, their compute requirements increase. That creates a straightforward commercial link: the more money Nvidia makes by supplying GPUs, the stronger the incentive to maintain the sector’s growth. A serious slowdown could reduce short-term profits and expose the debt-supported data-centre investment model to much greater pressure.
AI shares fall as calls for restraint grow
The sequence of events has attracted attention. Amodei published his essay on Saturday, the All-In Summit discussion was recorded on Monday, and Nvidia’s share price fell 5.6% over the following five days. Shares in the three largest RAM suppliers also all dipped after Amodei’s argument became widely discussed.
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None of this proves a direct cause-and-effect relationship between one essay and the market movements. It does show why calls to slow AI development are uncomfortable for companies, investors and political figures with substantial financial interests in data-centre expansion.
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