Neither executive joined his big tech contemporaries who stood ramrod behind Trump at his inauguration.
While Microsoft and Nvidia share a quieter approach to Trump, their footprints in Washington are the polar opposite. Microsoft, on the cusp of its 50th anniversary and schooled by its antitrust fight more than two decades ago, is arguably tech’s savviest player on policy issues, with a strong lobbying arm and executives who have nurtured contacts in both political parties.
Nvidia is a rookie in Washington. Its profile has grown rapidly in the last few years, thanks to its overwhelming control of the chips that other tech companies need to build big artificial intelligence systems.
The stakes for both companies are high. The new administration has to finalize rules about the sale of Nvidia chips and building Microsoft data centers overseas. Microsoft has an array of other concerns, including the electricity demands to power data centers. After a breakthrough development by the startup DeepSeek, Nvidia also faces a risk that the administration could further curtail sales of its chips to China.
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Nvidia has been beefing up its Washington presence. Last Monday, the company, which opened its first office there last year, brought on board a Republican government affairs executive, Stewart Barber, who worked as an adviser to Ivanka Trump, said two people familiar with Nvidia’s office. The company has applied to become a member of the Information Technology Industry Council, a policy group that represents most of the leading tech companies. It has also hired American Global Strategies, led by Robert C. O’Brien, who served as national security adviser for two years under Trump.
In a little over a year, Nvidia’s market value has ballooned by $2 trillion, making it one of the world’s three most valuable public companies, with Microsoft and Apple.
