What Trump’s second administration means for AI

In the nearly four years since Trump left the White House, the AI industry has absolutely exploded. Generative AI has been crammed into pretty much every tech product. White-hot demand for computing resources to train and run those AI models and tools has propelled GPU maker Nvidia to become the most valuable company in the world. 

Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all have embraced the technology at the core of their businesses in a massive tech realignment that has shifted the levers of power around the world. 

Countries are competing to lock down their homegrown technology to achieve “sovereign AI” and reduce their dependence on foreign technology. 

As Trump returns to the White House, Elon Musk has his ear, and could wield powerful influence over the second Trump administration's AI policies. 

Let’s take a look at what this all means for the biggest stakeholders in the AI industry today. 

Dueling executive orders on AI

The 2024 GOP platform specifically calls for repealing Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI. It said:

“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”

In 2019, Trump signed his own executive order on AI. But this order came out well before the current explosion of generative AI tools that shook up the entire industry. 

Trump’s order shared some of the same goals as Biden’s, such as calling upon the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop safety standards for AI, highlighting the importance of AI’s role in national security and ensuring that America keeps its competitive edge in AI. 

Biden’s order leaned more heavily into safety, by prioritizing the protection of Americans’ privacy and ordering AI companies to submit the most powerful models to government review before public release. 

Trump has repeatedly promised during his campaign to slash government regulations, and his second administration will likely seek to eliminate the few AI regulations in place and remove any barriers for companies developing the technology. 

Musk’s influence

Elon Musk’s many businesses depend on AI, including his AI research company xAI, which has trained its own “Grok” large language model on the “Colossus” supercomputing cluster powered by 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. 

Musk’s privileged position with Trump could give his companies an edge in the competition for huge amounts of cheap energy and scarce computing resources, as well as bigger government contracts. Musk’s SpaceX already has at least $15.4 billion in government contracts, and Tesla has at least $352,000. 

Multiple federal agencies are currently investigating Musk’s businesses’ use of AI, such as the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which is looking into Tesla’s “full self-driving” feature, a factor in several deadly accidents. The Trump administration could hinder or end such investigations.

Musk may be seeking to oust Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. He recently said that she “will be fired soon,” though the agency head has her share of fans from Trump’s party — “Khanservatives” — like VP-elect JD Vance, who has lauded the FTC’s moves to reign in social-media platforms. 

Meta

Since Mark Zuckerberg vowed to back off on moderating election-related content on Meta’s platforms, Trump seems to no longer consider Facebook an “enemy of the people,” despite previously calling for Zuckerberg to be jailed. Trump recently said he likes Zuckerberg “much better now.”

Musk, on the other hand, still appears to be beefing with Zuckerberg, as they brag about the size of their respective supercomputing clusters.

Meta looks like it’s trying to cozy up to the government and allay fears that its open-source large language models are being used by foreign adversaries like China. Just this week, Meta announced a push to get the US government to use its Llama AI model for defense and national-security applications. 

Microsoft

Earlier this year, the FTC announced that the agency was investigating some of the largest AI-technology partnerships, including Google’s and Amazon’s partnerships with Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s unusual $15 billion investment deal with OpenAI.

If Khan is removed from the FTC, this inquiry could be closed.

Google

Biden’s Department of Justice is potentially seeking to break up Google after its recent successful lawsuit, which ruled that Google’s search business is a monopoly. Trump has signaled that those plans may change under his new administration.

Amazon

Amazon’s AWS business recently posted huge growth, powered by demand for generative-AI cloud computing. 

Trump hasn’t had a great relationship with Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos. The first Trump administration raised postal rates for the company after Trump tweeted that the company used “our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

Bezos recently drew criticism — and lost a quarter-million subscribers — from readers of The Washington Post for killing an endorsement of Vice President Harris, the same day officials from his Blue Origin space company met with Trump. 

Nvidia

The AI GPU boom has catapulted Nvidia to a $3.6 trillion valuation, but Trump’s lust for punitive tariffs on Taiwanese chips may affect the company’s business, as the vast majority of today’s advanced microprocessors are manufactured in Taiwan. TSMC is a major supplier of advanced chips to Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. 

Trump has questioned why America should defend Taiwan against an attack by China without being paid for the protection. On Trump’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump said, “You know, Taiwan, they stole our chip business... and they want protection.” Trump also signaled that he would end Biden’s signature $39 billion domestic microchip-manufacturing bill, known as the CHIPS act. 

OpenAI

Elon Musk was once part of OpenAI, as one of the many cofounders of the nonprofit with Sam Altman. But now they’ve got bad blood, with the pair’s feud dating back to 2018, when Musk left the company as it turned away from pure research and sought to turn itself into a for-profit tech company. This has resulted in a series of lawsuits. 

At a New York Times event in November of 2023, Musk said, “I have mixed feelings about Sam. The ring of power can corrupt, and he has the ring of power.”