Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang is wagering that an AI buildout can revive U.S. manufacturing, with a factory in Sherman, Texas, serving as a test case. The factory, owned by Coherent, will produce material for a laser to transmit data among computer chips, allowing them to work as a single system with more power, speed, and efficiency.

AI Buildout Creating Jobs

The factory represents a fundamental test of whether AI will be a source of job creation instead of a technology that supplants workers. Coherent estimates that the factory will create 1,000 jobs, with about 550 of them in advanced manufacturing, engineering, and technical roles.

The factory expansion will increase production of Indium Phosphide, which is used to make a laser that has the optical intensity of the surface of the Sun. Each second, the light pulses a few hundred billion times through a fiberglass straw the width of a human hair. That allows Nvidia’s computer chips to share information and work together as one system in what Huang has dubbed ‘AI factories.’

Power consumption would be cut up to 50%, enabling computations to occur faster and at a drastically lower price. The prospect of reducing the cost of tokens — the industry’s term for AI usage — would make it easier for AI to expand its reach and abilities.

A SHIFTING APPROACH ON AI

President Donald Trump’s administration, which once saw a light regulatory touch as essential for fostering AI’s development, has recently begun to reverse course. It placed export controls on the AI company Anthropic’s latest models, leading the company on Friday to shutter all public access to those models over security concerns.

Trump has called Huang ‘smart,’ a ‘friend,’ and ‘amazing’ — and he’s publicly recounted that he once mused about breaking up Nvidia because of its dominance, only to admit that Huang was someone that he needed as an ally.

Original reporting: Texarkana Gazette — read the source article.