Donald Trump wants Taiwan to pay for U.S. protection—and that should worry shareholders of Nvidia, Microsoft and Tesla

aiwan needs to pay more protection money to the United States if it wants to prevent China from invading, Donald Trump said in comments that pose serious implications for leading artificial intelligence companies.

The island nation, which China views as its sovereign territory, is the number one manufacturing hub for cutting-edge semiconductors like the Nvidia H100 graphic processors that powers generative AI data centers used by the likes of Microsoft, Google, Amazon as well as Elon Musk’s Tesla and his latest startup xAI.