President Donald Trump has done a “phenomenal job” at working to increase domestic production of semiconductor chips as the technology race against China heats up, Substrate founder and CEO James Proud told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle.
The interview took place Tuesday in Washington, DC, at a Breitbart News policy event entitled “AI is Here: What to Fear, What to Embrace,” which also featured conversations with industry experts like Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, ASI CEO and co-founder Philip Buckendorf, and Innovation Council Action founder Taylor Budowich.
Substrate, Proud’s San Francisco-based startup, was founded to “return the United States to dominance in semiconductor fabrication” as the boom of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have exponentially increased the need for such chips.
The U.S. imported $156 billion worth of chips in 2024, while China reportedly invested more into its domestic chip industry than any other country in 2025.
Stressing the importance of ending the United States’s over-reliance on other countries for chips, Proud also praised the Trump administration for securing funding for fabrication plants, or “fabs.”
Substrate founder and CEO James Proud told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at a Breitbart News policy event how admiring he is of President Donald Trump’s achievements. (Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News)
“Well, the good news is that we’re not taking the knee, and the Trump administration has done a phenomenal job,” Proud told Boyle. “We are now building more fabs than we built in I think 20 years in the United States. So the work that Intel, TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix — these guys are all building in the United States in a way that we’ve not seen for a long time.”
“And I think that the scalers and a number of these other fabulous companies understand the geopolitical risk there,” the tech founder added.
The U.S. Department of Commerce shared the progress in June 2025, announcing that they had secured a $200 billion investment from Micron Technology, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of advanced memory chips, “to dramatically expand” American production.
“This announcement is part of the Trump Administration’s push to restore America’s manufacturing strength, advance America’s role as a technology leader, and put American workers first,” the department’s press release stated.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added that Trump had “made it clear that the time to build in America is now.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram