Nvidia’s Huang Urges G20 Countries to Build AI Infrastructure for Economic Growth

Jensen Huang wants the world’s largest economies to treat AI capacity less like a software purchase and more like a utility buildout. At a U.S.-hosted G20 technology event in North Carolina, Nvidia’s chief executive urged countries to accelerate AI adoption and develop the data centers and other infrastructure he says can support local economic growth.

Huang’s argument is that countries need their own underlying capacity to use AI across their economies. He called on G20 nations to speed adoption to enhance growth, while urging every country to build infrastructure, including data centers, that can serve its local economy.

The comparison Huang chose makes the intended scale clear. He likened AI infrastructure to water and electricity, describing it as a “great equalizer.” The formulation casts computing capacity as a broadly needed economic input rather than infrastructure reserved for a handful of technology companies.

Every single country needs to build infrastructure so you can support your own local economy.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, at a U.S.-hosted G20 technology event in North Carolina

Nvidia’s description of an AI factory gives the speech a concrete physical mechanism. The company says such facilities require advanced chips, packaging, memory and networking, plus land, power and shell capacity—the site and building needed to house the systems. A data-center strategy therefore extends beyond buying processors: developers must assemble the physical inputs that let those processors operate.

That view also explains Nvidia’s move toward project infrastructure. On Aug. 17, Nvidia said it had partnered with SB Energy to secure land, power and shell capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Portsmouth, Ohio, for Nvidia AI factories. Nvidia said OpenAI would be the tenant at that site.

The Ohio example is a company project, while Huang’s G20 remarks were a prescription for national policy. Both center on physical capacity that must be secured alongside computing equipment. For Nvidia, whose products sit inside those facilities, broader AI infrastructure also expands the settings where its systems can be deployed.

The appeal turns a national AI strategy into a construction-and-supply task as well as an adoption agenda. Huang is asking countries to build the data centers and supporting infrastructure that can put AI computing into local use; Nvidia’s own definition shows why that undertaking reaches from chips and networking to land, power and buildings.