- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Donald Trump and criticized the proposed GAIN AI Act’s restrictions on chip exports
- Lawmakers have now dropped the chip export proposal from the annual defense bill
- Huang also warned that state-level AI laws would harm American innovation and national security
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t known for wading into the political fray, but this week he made an exception with some quality time in Washington, DC. He met with President Trump to argue against the GAIN AI Act and its proposed rule requiring US chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD to prioritize domestic buyers before selling advanced AI chips abroad.
The move was touted as a way to keep America ahead of China in the AI race, but it wasn’t long after he met with the president that lawmakers removed it from the National Defense Authorization Act. Huang was quick to proclaim his support for export controls, just not this one.
“The GAIN AI Act is even more harmful to the United States than the AI Diffusion Act,” Huang said at a press conference after the meeting. He called it “wise” for lawmakers to back away from the plan.
For Nvidia, the undisputed global heavyweight in AI hardware, that kind of disruption would be like asking Boeing to fly with half an engine. Their chips already dominate cloud computing and generative AI development worldwide. Losing the freedom to sell to controlled international customers without a government-imposed queue would erode their edge in a business built on speed and scale.
Although Huang gave his corporate lobbying a patriotic veneer, he pointed to more than just Nvidia’s bottom line as a reason to oppose the GAIN AI Act. The law would have forced companies like Nvidia to delay foreign chip orders while confirming there was no outstanding demand in the US, but giving US institutions and companies a fair shot at high-end AI chips ahead of foreign markets would, he argued, also slow innovation for rivals, complicate global logistics and hurt the US’s ability to remain competitive in AI.
For most people, the impact of these legislative debates is indirect but very real. If Huange is right, the regulatory bottleneck would slow the pace of AI improvements for everyone. Even if he’s wrong, if foreign groups can grab all the most powerful chips, it will make it harder for American companies to compete.
Patchwork AI rules
That wasn’t Huang’s only legislative foe this week. He met with lawmakers to criticize a separate idea gaining traction among US states: local AI regulation. “State-by-state AI regulation would bring this industry to a standstill,” Huang warned. “It would create a national security problem.”
If AI laws start to diverge wildly across California, Texas, New York and every other state, it could create a compliance nightmare for developers. Imagine having to adjust your chatbot’s features depending on which zip code your user lives in. Bills are circulating in at least 30 states that propose different standards for disclosure, bias, transparency and security in AI systems.
Trump reportedly echoed Huang’s concern during their meeting and has publicly supported the idea of a national standard that would override state laws. So far, the NDAA doesn’t have those kinds of rules, but if it becomes a real problem, it could end up in next year’s bill.
For tech critics, this is familiar territory: Big Tech is pushing for a single federal rule to avoid dealing with 50 regulatory headaches. And it’s not as if the regulatory friction might not bother the average AI user. It would be like 50 different versions of GDPR, but with no way to fully comply.
Shelving the GAIN AI Act is, depending on your point of view, a signal that lawmakers are not ready to clip the wings of America’s main chip company, or that they are pandering to powerful and rich corporate interests. Or both. And while the future of AI regulation at all levels is still in flux, Huang has outlined what tech’s most powerful players envision as the ideal solution.
If you use AI tools, or will soon, this is important. It is not just about export forms and legal frameworks. It’s about who’s going to move fast, who’s going to be slowed down, and how much trust we have in a handful of companies to shape the technology infrastructure of the next decade.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
The best business laptops for all budgets
