TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said Wednesday that the company is not involved in any discussions with TSMC about taking over Intel's foundry business. 

Reuters reported that TSMC had approached Nvidia, Broadcom, and Advanced Micro Devices about a deal. The joint venture would allow TSMC to run Intel's contract chipmaking business while adding capacity to produce semiconductors for its US clients.

During Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, Huang told reporters, “Nobody's invited us to a consortium,” reported Nikkei Asia. "Maybe other people are involved, but I don't know,” the CEO said. 

However, Huang said Nvidia needs more onshore production in the US to protect itself from potential tariffs. He said, “Long term, we want to retain the [supply chain] agility, but add a very significant part of our agility which is onshore."  

TSMC CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said customers like Nvidia facilitated its US$100 billion investment in the US. In December 2024, Reuters reported that TSMC was in talks with Nvidia about manufacturing its Blackwell chips at the new Arizona fab.

During the press conference, Huang also mentioned Meta's AI spending boosted Nvidia chip demand. Meta is among the largest buyers of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which will be used to train its open-source large-language Llama models.

In addition, Huang reported that Nvidia’s China sales have been affected by the US-China trade war. He highlighted China’s growing AI market and research, with innovations like Deepseek. However, US export controls are meant to prevent DeepSeek from accessing advanced AI chips made by US chipmakers like Nvidia.