Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says TSMC is among greatest companies in history

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Friday showered praise on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on a visit to Taiwan, saying that anybody looking to take a stake in the company would be “very smart.”

This comes at a time when the U.S. administration has signaled interest in acquiring stakes in tech companies, especially those in receipt of funding under the U.S. CHIPS Act.

Huang, who said the main purpose of his trip was to thank TSMC for work related to Nvidia’s Rubin, its next-generation AI chip architecture, made the remarks in response to a query on Washington looking to take a stake in the Taiwanese chip foundry.

“Well, first of all, I think TSMC is one of the greatest companies in the history of humanity, and anybody who wants to buy TSMC stock is a very smart person,” he said. 

Huang also said TSMC was making six new products for Nvidia, including a new central processing unit, a hardware component used for computation, and a new graphics processing unit, used for advanced computation, especially AI.

Earlier this week, Reuters had reported that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was looking at equity stakes in exchange for CHIPS Act funding for companies such as Micron, TSMC and Samsung. 

The 2022 CHIPS Act, passed with bipartisan support under the Joe Biden administration, has seen grants and loans awarded to chipmakers expanding production in the U.S. as part of efforts by Washington to revitalize U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC had been promised $6.6 billion under the act to help build its three cutting-edge chip fabrication plants in Arizona.

Lutnick confirmed in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that the government was in talks to take a 10% equity stake in troubled semiconductor company Intel, and said the administration might consider stakes in other firms as well.

A report from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, however, said the government had no plans to seek shares in semiconductor firms that were increasing their U.S. investments, citing a government official. TSMC, in March, announced an expansion of its Investment in the United States to $165 billion.

Separately, Huang said that Nvidia was eager to begin work on “NVIDIA Constellation” — a recently announced new Taiwan office for the company to house its growing Taiwan workforce.

Huang said the company was still working with the local government to resolve some issues to start its construction. 

“We have many, many employees here in Taiwan, and we’re growing here in Taiwan because our supply chain is so busy here.” 

“We’re working with chip companies, system vendors and system makers all over Taiwan, and everybody is working so hard for us and so we need a lot of engineers to work alongside them,” he added.

Shares in TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, have gained 6.5% so far this year.

Separately, news reports on Friday said Nvidia had asked some of its component suppliers to stop production related to its made-for-China H20 graphics processing units, after China raised security concerns over the chips. 

Last month, Nvidia said it expected to receive an export license for its H20 chips, which had been effectively banned in April. However, Beijing has reportedly placed a freeze on local companies’ ability to buy them.

According to Reuters, one of the companies told to pause their work in relation to the H20 chips was Taiwan’s Foxconn — also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry. Foxconn did not respond to an inquiry from CNBC on the matter.

Huang on Friday said that the company had responded to Beijing’s concerns regarding its H20s and was hoping that the issue would be resolved.