President Joe Biden has proposed one more round of export restrictions on AI chips, set to affect those made by Nvidia and AMD, with the goal of limiting China's and Russia's access to chips for training artificial-intelligence models and powering data centers.
A White House announcement on Monday said chip sales to 18 US allies would be free of restrictions and controls would not apply to chip orders below certain computation thresholds.
The proposed rules, which also aim to help businesses around the world align with American standards, are set to take effect 120 days from publication.
Under the restrictions, entities outside close US allies would still be able to purchase up to the equivalent of 50,000 advanced graphics processing units per country.
In a blog post published Monday, Nvidia criticized the plan. Ned Finkle, the company's vice president of government affairs, called the rules "unprecedented and misguided" and said they "threaten to derail innovation and economic growth worldwide."
"While cloaked in the guise of an 'anti-China' measure, these rules would do nothing to enhance US security," Finkle said. "The new rules would control technology worldwide, including technology that is already widely available in mainstream gaming PCs and consumer hardware."
Revenue from China and Hong Kong made up 15% of the company's sales, or $5.4 billion, in the three months ending October 27. Nvidia generated the bulk of its business — 42% — in the US that quarter.
The framework would add to a list of US curbs already in place to prevent adversary countries from using advanced AI to modernize their militaries. In November 2023, the US Department of Commerce implemented the Advanced Computing Chips Rule, which allows Nvidia and others to sell only a less-powerful version of its chip in China.
But that has not stopped access completely.
In August, a New York Times investigation found that a network of companies had found ways around the ban. The group is selling Nvidia's most advanced chips to state-affiliated groups in China, the Times said.
The Biden administration has boosted the industry domestically with tax breaks and subsidies.
It has provided American chipmakers with close to $30 billion in subsidies as part of the 2022 CHIPS Act, a $280 billion package to support semiconductor innovation in the US. Intel, Micron, AMD, and Microchip Technology are among the direct beneficiaries.
President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the CHIPS Act and said that the government should have implemented tariffs instead to motivate overseas chipmakers to build more factories in the US, a move he said would create jobs.
