Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Friday showered praise on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on a visit to Taiwan, saying that anybody looking to take a stake in the company would be “very smart.”

This comes at a time when the U.S. administration has signaled interest in acquiring stakes in tech companies, especially those in receipt of funding under the U.S. CHIPS Act.

Huang, who said the main purpose of his trip to Taiwan was to thank TSMC for their work on Nvidia’s Rubin, its next-generation AI chip platform, made the remarks in response to a query on Washington looking to take a stake in TSMC. 

“Well, first of all, I think TSMC is one of the greatest companies in the history of humanity, and anybody who wants to buy TSMC stock is a very smart person,” he said. 

Huang said TSMC was making six new products for Nvidia, including a new central processing unit, a hardware component used for computation, and a new general processing unit, used for advanced computation, especially AI.

Earlier this week, Reuters had reported that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was looking at equity stakes in exchange for CHIPS Act funding for companies such as Micron, TSMC and Samsung. 

The 2022 CHIPS Act, passed with bipartisan support under the Joe Biden administration, has seen grants and loans awarded to chipmakers expanding production in the U.S. as part of efforts by Washington to revitalize U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. TSMC had been promised $6.6 billion under the act to help build its three cutting-edge chip fabrication plants in Arizona.

Lutnick confirmed in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that the government was in talks to take a 10% equity stake in troubled semiconductor company Intel, and said the administration might consider stakes in other firms as well.

A report from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, however, said the government had no plans to seek shares in semiconductor firms that were increasing their U.S. investments, citing a government official. TSMC, in March, announced an expansion of its Investment in the United States to $165 billion.

Separately, Huang said that Nvidia was eager to begin work on “NVIDIA Constellation” — a recently announced new Taiwan office for the company to house its growing Taiwan workforce.

Huang said the company was still working with the local government to resolve some issues to start its construction. 

“We have many, many employees here in Taiwan, and we’re growing here in Taiwan because our supply chain is so busy here.” 

“We’re working with chip companies, system vendors and system makers all over Taiwan, and everybody is working so hard for us and so we need a lot of engineers to work alongside them,” he added.

Shares in TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, have gained 6.5% so far this year.

Separately, news reports on Friday said Nvidia had asked some of its component suppliers to stop production related to its made-for-China H20 general processing units, after China raised security concerns over the chips. 

Last month, Nvidia said it expected to receive an export license for its H20 chips, which had been effectively banned in April. However, Beijing has reportedly placed a freeze on local company’s ability to buy them.

According to Reuters, one of the companies told to pause their work in relation to the H20 chips was Taiwan’s Foxconn — also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry. Foxconn did not respond to an inquiry from CNBC on the matter.

Huang on Friday said that the company had responded to Beijing’s concerns regarding its H20s and was hoping that the issue would be resolved.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help him finance a $97.4 billion takeover of OpenAI in early 2025, court filings on Thursday revealed.

The filing is part of a legal case between Musk and OpenAI that was initiated last year. The case is proceeding in a federal court in Northern California, and a judge recently said OpenAI can move ahead with counter claims against Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit with Sam Altman and others in 2015.

When Musk floated his proposal to buy OpenAI in February, he was incensed that the company and Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, were pushing to transform the business into a for-profit entity. Altman and Musk, who were longtime friends, have become bitter adversaries since OpenAI’s emergence as a leader in generative AI with billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.

Musk started xAI in 2023 and was pushing for it to be a direct competitor to OpenAI. Musk later sued OpenAI, alleging a breach of contract, and tried to stop OpenAI from converting to a for-profit company.

In its counter claims, OpenAI has alleged that Musk and xAI’s “sham bid” harmed its business and that Musk has engaged in “harassment” through litigation and attacks on social media and in the press.

As part of its complaint, OpenAI has filed to subpoena Meta for communications between the company, its CEO and Musk about the bid.

In a statement to the court published Thursday, OpenAI said that when Musk and xAI were trying to form a consortium of investors to finance a takeover, they approached Zuckerberg with a letter of intent and asked “about potential financing arrangements or investments.”

Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed the LOI, the filing said.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. Marc Toberoff, Musk’s attorney in the case, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The statement in the filing said that Meta has been “spending heavily to develop its own Al capabilities” and has been “offering pay packages of $100 million or more to leading Al researchers and attempting to poach OpenAI employees.” 

Meta has argued that OpenAI’s requests for documents are overly burdensome, and that OpenAI should obtain relevant communications from Musk and xAI, instead.

WATCH: How Sam Altman is tackling a growing threat to the future of OpenAI: Elon Musk

Nvidia has asked some of its component suppliers to stop production related to its made-for-China H20 general processing units, as Beijing cracks down on the American chip darling, The Information reported Friday. 

The directive comes weeks after the Chinese government told local tech companies to stop buying the chips due to alleged security concerns, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Nvidia reportedly has asked Arizona-based Amkor Technology, which handles the advanced packaging of the company’s H20 chips, and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which supplies memory for them, to halt production. Samsung and Amkor did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. 

A separate report from Reuters, citing sources, said that Nvidia had asked Foxconn to suspend work related to the H20s. Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to an inquiry from CNBC, an Nvidia spokesperson said “We constantly manage our supply chain to address market conditions.”

The news further throws the return of the H20s to the China market in doubt, after Washington said it would issue export licenses, allowing the chip’s exports to China — whose shipment had effectively been banned in April.  

Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China had summoned Nvidia regarding national security concerns with the H20s and had asked the company to provide information on the chips. 

Beijing has raised concerns that the chips could be have certain tracking technology or “backdoors,” allowing them to be operated remotely. U.S. lawmakers have proposed legislation that would require AI chips under export regulations to be equipped with location-tracking systems to avoid their illegal shipments.

Speaking to reporters in Taiwan on Friday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that China had asked questions about security “backdoors,” and that the company had made it clear they do not exist.

“Hopefully the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient. We’re in discussions with them,” he said, adding that Nvidia had been “surprised” by the queries.

“As you know, [Beijing] requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20s, for some time and I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses, and so hopefully this will be resolved,” he said.

Nvidia in a statement on Friday said “The market can use the H20 with confidence.”

It added: “As both governments recognize, the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure. China won’t rely on American chips for government operations, just like the U.S. government would not rely on chips from China. However, allowing U.S. chips for beneficial commercial business use is good for everyone.”

Last month, Nvidia had reportedly sent notices to major tech companies and AI developers urging them against the use of the H20s, in what first had appeared as a soft mandate. The Information later reported that Beijing had told some firms, including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent,  to halt orders of the chips altogether, until the completion of a national security review. 

It had been seen as a major win for Nvidia when Huang announced last month that the U.S. government would allow sales of the company’s H20 chips to China.

However, the national security scrutiny the H20s are now facing from the Chinese side, highlights the difficulties of navigating Nvidia’s business through increasing tensions and shifting trade policy between Washington and Beijing. 

Chip industry analysts have also said Beijing’s actions appear to reinforce its commitment to its own chip self-sufficiency campaigns and its intention to resist the Trump administration’s plan to keep American AI hardware dominant in China.