WASHINGTON–Tech CEOs joined President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday, where they shared their investment commitments over the coming years.
Trump met with the likes of Dell CEO and Founder Michael Dell, HP CEO Enrique Lores, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and President and CEO of HP Enterprises Antonio Neri.
Trump went around the room asking executives how much their respective companies have committed in terms of investment, beginning with Krishna, who noted that IBM has committed to $150 billion.
Dell, who notably announced with his wife, Susan, a donation of $6.25 billion to fund investment accounts, or “Trump Accounts,” for 25 million American children last week, went second.
While Dell did not provide a precise number or a time frame, he estimated that the company is committed to investing “several hundred billion dollars.”
“If I think about all the, you know, investment that we make with the American companies that are adding capacity, particularly around semiconductors, it’s several hundred billion dollars,” he said.
“That’s pretty good,” Trump responded. “It makes the $6 billion sound very–very small. That’s very good.”
Neri said that HP Enterprise is committing an additional $3.5 billion in investment in the next few years.
“Over the next few years, we’re going to invest an additional $3.5 billion buiding secure manufacturing. We build the largest supercomputer for the United States government that supports both the [Department of War] and [Department of Energy],” he said.
“So in the next 18 months, we’re going to build the largest five supercomputers that will keep the United States ahead of the game, both in life science and AI, but also to keep ahead… the entire stack at the national security level,” he added.
Lores, who emphasized that HP Enterprises and HP are “totally separate companies,” said HP averages about 18 billion annually in investment.
“From our side, we invest in the U.S. around $18 billion per year. So you look at the… next five, it will be close to $100 billion,” Lores said.
“And we are going to be investing in AI…not only on data centers, but how to make AI available to customers in PCs, in headsets, in devices that they will be using every day,” he added.
He also joked, “We’re competing hard with Michael,” a reference to the Dell and HP rivalry.
Amon did not provide a figure but offered insight into how the company is investing:
“In addition to doing phones, I think…our chips are going to every car company in the world, all the car companies,” he said.
“We’re entering today, robotics, there’s a lot of growth in robotics and the data center. New smart glass is going to be the future of mobile devices,” he added.
Trump said that there have been $18 trillion in investment commitments in the U.S. since he took office.
Read the full article here