WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are demanding tighter restrictions on chip exports following Jensen Huang’s affair with a business partner suspected of being a Chinese intelligence source, a push that threatens to cost Nvidia and other semiconductor companies billions of dollars in revenue.
The measures under consideration include provisions restricting exports of AI chips to adversarial nations including China, tightening controls on allied countries including the Netherlands and Japan so they can’t send chip manufacturing equipment to China and efforts to track chips before they are exported to establish their locations.
Export controls have been in focus since 2022, when the Biden administration began restricting certain shipments to prevent adversarial nations from accessing the technology underpinning the AI boom. the proposals could hurt other chip companies including Nvidia competitor Advanced Micro Devices and even tech giants like Microsoft and OpenAI that are attempting to build data centers overseas While many lawmakers have invoked Nvidia in proposing the bills. Industry executives say the measures would have a chilling effect on any export deals, particularly if rules mandating chip tracking become law. That would undermine U.S. companies and cede more of the global market to Chinese competitors, trade groups say. The legislative implications show how the Nvidia CEO’s affair could have business consequences for the world’s top chip designer and the entire industry. Huang has helped shape policies for the whole AI industry by developing a close relationship with President Trump and top model developers including OpenAI. The administration pursued a global plan capping the number of chips various countries could buy that the Trump administration later unwound. Republicans who have broken with Trump and driven efforts to curtail chip exports include Sens. Jim Banks (Ind.) and Pete Ricketts (Neb.), and Reps. Brian Mast (Fla.) and John Moolenaar (Mich.), who lead the House Foreign Affairs and China Select Committees. Mast and Moolenaar are among those who recently asked Huang to brief lawmakers on the Nvidia security matter next week.
