Nvidia’s Huang: AI Will Create Jobs, Texas Factory Is Test
SHERMAN, Texas — Jensen Huang, the leather-jacketed CEO of Nvidia, has a message for American workers worried about artificial intelligence: don’t panic. AI, he insists, will create manufacturing jobs — and a groundbreaking factory in North Texas is about to put that claim to the test.
Nvidia formally unveiled plans Tuesday for a major upgrade to its AI infrastructure as part of a $2 billion partnership with Coherent, the owner of a factory in Sherman, Texas, about an hour north of Dallas. The facility will produce Indium Phosphide, a material used to make a laser that transmits data among computer chips with the optical intensity of the surface of the Sun, pulsing hundreds of billions of times per second through a fiberglass straw the width of a human hair.
The Jobs Question
Coherent estimates the expansion will create 1,000 jobs, with roughly 550 in advanced manufacturing, engineering, and technical roles. It’s a tangible data point in what has become one of the most heated debates in the American economy: will AI be a net creator of jobs or a destroyer of them?
Huang’s answer is unequivocal. During a conversation at the Milken Institute in May, he told MSNBC’s Becky Quick that “AI creates jobs” and described AI as “the United States’ best opportunity to re-industrialize.” He pushed back against what he called “science fiction stories” that scare people away from engaging with the technology.
“My greatest concern is that we scare…people — all the people that we’re telling these science fiction stories to, to the point where AI is so unpopular in the United States, or people are so afraid of it, that they don’t actually engage it,” Huang said.
Task Automation vs. Job Replacement
Huang draws a critical distinction between automating a task and eliminating a job. People who believe AI replaces jobs, he argued, “misunderstand that the purpose of a job and the task of a job are related but not ultimately the same thing.” In his view, even when AI takes over discrete tasks within a role, the broader function an employee serves in an organization is likely to remain.
Yet the counterargument is formidable. Reputable financial and academic organizations have suggested that as much as 15% of jobs in the U.S. could be eliminated over the next several years as a result of AI, according to Boston Consulting Group research cited by TechCrunch. The Bloomberg Opinion piece published the day before Nvidia’s announcement framed the issue as “The AI Jobs Crisis No One Is Talking About.”
The Technology Behind the Bet
The Sherman factory isn’t just about jobs — it’s about a fundamental shift in how computing works. The Indium Phosphide laser allows Nvidia’s chips to work as a single system in what Huang has dubbed “AI factories.” Power consumption would be cut by up to 50%, enabling faster computations at a drastically lower price. Reducing the cost of tokens — the industry’s term for AI usage units — would accelerate AI’s expansion into new industries.
“AI factories are the infrastructure of the new industrial revolution,” Huang said in a statement.
Jim Anderson, Coherent’s CEO, framed the investment as a national priority: “This investment expands America’s capacity to manufacture critical AI-enabling technologies, creates high-value jobs, and reinforces U.S. leadership in advanced manufacturing, photonics, and innovation.”
Bipartisan Support, Political Stakes
The factory received bipartisan government backing — $33 million from the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act and an additional $17 million grant from the Trump administration. It’s a rare point of consensus in a deeply divided Washington.
President Donald Trump has embraced the AI industry as essential to American greatness. “It’s bigger than any industry anyone’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters last week. “We are leading China by a lot. And whoever leads that is going to really lead the world to a large extent, that’s how big it is.”
Trump has insisted on Huang accompanying him on foreign trips, most recently having Air Force One pick up the CEO in Alaska while en route for a state visit to China. “We are proud to have you in our country,” Trump told the Taiwanese immigrant last year.
Yet the administration’s approach to AI has been shifting. After initially favoring a light regulatory touch, the Trump administration recently placed export controls on Anthropic’s latest AI models, leading the company to shutter public access. Trump has also signed an order for new AI models to be voluntarily vetted by the government and has mused about the government owning a stake in AI-developing companies.
The Bigger Picture
Nvidia, now worth roughly $5 trillion as the world’s most valuable company, is moving beyond designing computer chips to providing entire AI systems. One Nvidia executive described the company as selling “brains and a nervous system” to customers, enabling AI to move from laptops onto factory floors where it can, in their words, “move atoms.”
The scale of investment is staggering. Economists Jessica Wachter and Jonathan Wachter noted in a paper published this month that the five largest U.S. technology firms invested $380 billion last year in AI buildout, a sum that could roughly double this year. AI is roughly 3% of the U.S. economy now, but that figure could grow to a range of 8% to 39%.
What to Watch
The Sherman factory will take time to build, and its 1,000 jobs will be a visible, measurable outcome in the AI jobs debate. But the deeper question remains unanswered: will these be net new jobs, or will they be offset by AI-driven displacement elsewhere in the economy?
For now, Huang is betting big that the answer is yes — and Texas is where that bet begins.