Nvidia CEO says AI will create ‘six-figure salary’ jobs for electricians and plumbers

DAVOS, Switzerland - As artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to upend job markets in countries around the world, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang brushed off longer-term concerns and made the case that skilled vocational workers are seeing increasing demand now.

Plumbers, electricians and construction workers are going to be able to command “six-figure salaries”, thanks to demand to build data centres that run and train AI, he said in an interview with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan 21.

The technology will require one of the biggest infrastructure build-outs in history, with trillions of dollars in new investment, Mr Huang said.

“We’re seeing quite a significant boom in this area. Salaries have gone up nearly double,” he said. “Everybody should be able to make a great living. You don’t need to have a PhD in computer science to do so.”

Mr Huang’s comments echo remarks made at Davos on Jan 20 by Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp, who praised workers with “vocational training” and said AI would create more local jobs and largely eliminate the need for mass immigration.

Coreweave CEO Michael Intrator also touched on the “physicality” of the AI boom at a panel later on Jan 21, describing the need for growing numbers of plumbers, electricians and carpenters. 

Nvidia, the leading maker of chips that help power and run the latest AI models, has benefited from the huge rush to build data centres.

The company is on track to generate almost US$200 billion (S$256.7 billion) in data centre chip sales for 2025, according to an average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg.

To date, the bulk of its revenue comes from the biggest data centre builders – Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon.com, Alphabet – but it is striking deals with a growing number of smaller data centre operators. Tech firms have committed to spending a combined US$500 billion in data centre leases in the coming years.

AI’s impact on the job market is already being felt. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned about a “white-collar bloodbath” that could wipe out 50 per cent of entry-level jobs.

The company’s Claude AI is gaining attention for its coding abilities, a feature that could displace more junior programmers. 

“We’re entering a world where the (tasks of) junior-level software engineers – maybe many of the tasks of the more senior-level software engineers – are starting to be done most of the way by AI systems. Now that’s going to go further,” Mr Amodei said in an interview at Davos on Jan 20.

While he believes the good from the technology will outweigh the bad, high unemployment and underemployment are risks that need to be mitigated. 

“There’s going to be unfortunately a whole class of people who are, across a lot of industries, going to have a hard time coping,” he said. 

On Jan 21, Mr Fink noticeably avoided probing Mr Huang on sensitive topics, most notably China. Nvidia’s sales to the country are controversial, and the company is waiting to hear whether it will be able to sell its chips to the country and in what quantities.

Just on Jan 20, Mr Amodei likened shipping Nvidia chips into China to selling nuclear weapons to North Korea. 

Mr Huang is expected to visit China at the end of January as he works to reopen a crucial market for the company’s AI chips.

It is a pivotal time for the business, after the United States moved to ease limits on chip exports to China which it has had in place since 2022.

Nvidia is still blocked from shipping the top-of-the-line chips to the country, stymieing Beijing’s ability to innovate beyond the cutting-edge of AI, but will be able to ship older-generation H200 AI chips.

China, meanwhile, is expected to clear H200 imports for commercial use in the first three months of 2026, though it will not allow the chips for use in the military, sensitive government agencies, critical infrastructure or its state-owned enterprises, Bloomberg News reported.

Some of the country’s most prominent tech firms, including Alibaba Group and ByteDance, have privately expressed interest in ordering more than 200,000 units each of the chip. BLOOMBERG