Nvidia’s chips fuel A.I. — Here’s why the U.S. worries about China’s access
Jensen Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, speaks during the Computex Show in Taipei on May 30, 2017.
SAM YEH | AFP | Getty Images
Nvidia’s powerful semiconductors have taken on particular importance as their capacity to fuel artificial intelligence has become increasingly sought-after.
But their unique capacity is also what’s made China hawks in the U.S. fearful about what it could mean for them to get into the wrong hands, where it could be used to accelerate the spread of non-democratic ideas or develop autonomous weapons.
“If the democratic side is not in the lead on the technology, and authoritarians get ahead, we put the whole of democracy and human rights at risk,” Eileen Donahoe, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council and now executive director of Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, told NBC in a recent interview.
With U.S. AI executives warning the government that China is not far behind in its development of the transformative technology, U.S. policymakers believe there’s deep urgency in taking steps to stay ahead.
That’s why the Commerce Department is reportedly considering new limits on the export of such chips to China, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Nvidia had already created a version of the A100, its popular AI chip, that it could sell to the Chinese market. The A800 was made to stay within performance parameters previously outlined by the Commerce Department.
But the new limits reportedly being considered by the Biden administration would restrict even those sales without a license.
Such a move would continue the ongoing standoff between the U.S. and Chinese governments on technology sales between the two countries. The Chinese government in May barred “critical information infrastructure” from buying products from U.S. memory chipmaker Micron, saying the company poses a “major security risk.” The U.S. Commerce Department at the time said they “firmly oppose restrictions that have no basis in fact.”
U.S. limitations on the sale of chips with AI capacity to China would make it harder for China to keep up with the pace of development of the sector by U.S. companies like Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. While Chinese companies may have some additional advanced chips saved up or resort to slower semiconductors, further limits on high-speed chips could limit their agility in the AI race.
American executives have warned the U.S. government that AI produced without the proper guardrails can be used in nefarious ways. AI models can be designed in ways that perpetuate discrimination in contexts including law enforcement actions, housing and loan approvals and more, for example. But they can also be used to mass produce convincing propaganda or even to develop autonomous weapons.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the Journal report and Nvidia declined to comment.
-CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed to this report.
WATCH: Can China’s ChatGPT clones give it an edge over the U.S. in an A.I. arms race?
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Marco Bello | Getty Images
The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital asset firm to head for the public market.
The company, led by CEO Tom Farley, a veteran of the finance industry and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “BLSH.”
A spinout of Block.one, Bullish started with an initial investment from backers including Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, along with Nomura, Mike Novogratz and others. Bullish acquired crypto news site CoinDesk in 2023.
“In the first quarter of 2025, Bullish exchange executed over $2.5 billion in average daily volume, ranking in the top five exchanges by spot volume for Bitcoin and Ether,” the company said on its website. The prospectus listed top competitors as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
The IPO filing says that as of March 31, the total trading volume since launch has exceeded $1.25 trillion.
The filing is another significant step for the cryptocurrency industry, which has fought for years to convince institutions to embrace digital assets as legitimate investments.
It’s already been a big year on the market for crypto offerings, highlighted by stablecoin issuer Circle, which has jumped more than sevenfold since its IPO in June. Etoro, an online trading platform that includes services for crypto investors, debuted in May.
Novogratz‘s crypto firm Galaxy Digital started trading on the Nasdaq in May, moving its listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange. And in June, Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, confidentially filed for an IPO in the U.S.
Meanwhile, investors continue to flock to bitcoin. The digital currency is trading at over $117,000, up from about $94,000 at the start of the year.
President Donald Trump, on Friday, signed the GENIUS Act into law — a set of regulations that establish some initial consumer protections around stablecoins, which are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar with the intent of reducing price volatility associated with many cryptocurrencies.
In its filing with the SEC, Bullish says its mission is partly to “drive the adoption of stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchain technology.”
Crypto industry players, including Thiel, Elon Musk, and President Trump’s AI and Crypto czar David Sacks spent heavily to re-elect Trump and have pushed for legislation that legitimizes digital assets and exchanges.
WATCH: Trump’s crypto plan
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