Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares climbed 1.6% to $215.65 on Wednesday after Chief Executive Jensen Huang firmly rejected calls for new artificial intelligence regulation, a stance that drew swift endorsements from White House officials and prominent technology leaders.

Huang: “Safety Is an Engineering Problem”

Speaking at a Salesforce conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Huang took a clear position against new legislative measures to govern the AI sector, framing safety as an engineering discipline and arguing that existing market dynamics already provide sufficient oversight.

“Safety is an engineering problem,” Huang stated. “If you build a product or a service and you’re not confident in its functionality, capability, or safety, then don’t release it. The market forces are already there. We don’t need any new laws. We don’t need new regulations.”

His comments capped a challenging start to the week for NVDA shares. Leaders from Anthropic and OpenAI had voiced support for decelerating AI development, sparking concerns among investors that regulatory action could constrain demand for Nvidia’s semiconductor products. The disagreement lays bare a fault line running through the AI industry itself: the labs calling for slower development and the chipmaker whose sales depend on continued buildout of AI infrastructure now sit on opposite sides of the regulatory question.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reinforced the opposition to regulation. In a social media post on Tuesday, he suggested that AI companies already possess sufficient motivation to ensure their models are developed responsibly, echoing Huang’s argument that market incentives are adequate.

Administration Endorses Huang’s Position

The Trump administration quickly embraced Huang’s viewpoint. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House AI adviser David Sacks both referenced his statements favorably.

President Trump had already reached out to Huang by phone on Monday during a summit appearance to publicly counter suggestions for slowing AI progress. Such explicit presidential backing represents an unusual level of support for a corporate executive.

The implications for Nvidia are significant. Regulatory constraints on the purchase of AI chips for model training would strike directly at the company’s primary revenue stream, while a proposed pause on new data center development — an idea floated by Senator Bernie Sanders — would represent a severe threat to growth. With the administration endorsing Huang’s no-new-laws approach and Sanders’ proposal pointing in the opposite direction, legislative developments in Washington now form a policy thread worth tracking alongside the company’s financial calendar.

Wall Street Remains Optimistic

From a financial standpoint, the company’s performance appears robust. Nvidia posted revenue of $96.22 billion in its latest quarterly report, representing a 105.9% year-over-year increase. Earnings per share came in at $2.22, surpassing the analyst consensus of $2.09 by $0.13.

The stock opened at $227.38 on Tuesday and has traded in a 12-month range of $164.27 to $236.54. Nvidia’s market capitalization stands at $5.48 trillion.

Institutional investors hold 65.27% of outstanding shares, with recent positions added by Bank of America, Amundi, and Dimensional Fund Advisors.

Analyst price targets have been trending upward. Truist Financial raised its target to $346 and KGI Securities lifted its target to $345, while the average consensus across 55 analysts stands at $324.34, accompanied by a prevailing “Buy” recommendation.

In corporate development news, Nvidia has reportedly reached an agreement to purchase Hugging Face for roughly $12.9 billion, a deal that would provide the company with entry to an extensive network of AI models and developer communities.

A noteworthy development: company insiders disposed of roughly $392.7 million in shares during the previous 90 days, including a $144 million transaction by director Mark Stevens in early September.

The company also announced a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, scheduled for payment on October 1st, representing a 0.4% yield.

Source: Blockonomi