Selling AI chips to China is like ‘promoting nuclear – Business News
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday that US companies like Nvidia mustn’t sell their superior artificial intelligence chips to China – calling the transfer a main mistake with “incredible national security implications.”
Amodei, identified for his dire warnings concerning the potential misuse of AI fashions, spoke out weeks after the Trump administration stated Nvidia might resume the sale of its highly effective H200 chips to China – with 25% of proceeds going to the US authorities.
“We are many years ahead of China in terms of our ability to make chips, so I think it would be a big mistake to ship these chips,” Amodei stated during an interview with Bloomberg on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
CEO and Co-Founder of Anthropic Dario Amodei speaks during the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) assembly in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2026. REUTERS
“I think this is crazy,” he added. “It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.”
The US tech industry and China are locked in a winner-takes-all battle to develop more highly effective AI fashions within the hops of reaching synthetic normal intelligence — a model with human-level cognitive skills.
Critics argue permitting China to entry the best chips will eradicate a key benefit for the US.
Despite such considerations, Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang have argued vigorously in favor of lifting export curbs, asserting that China will merely make its own chips if it will probably’t entry ones which are made within the US.
Amodei stated the earlier US ban on the sale of superior AI chips was “the thing that is holding them back.”
“They’ve said it themselves,” he stated. “The CEOs of these [Chinese] companies say ‘it’s the embargo on chips that’s holding us back.’ They explicitly say this.”
The Anthropic boss known as on the Trump administration to rethink its easing of export controls, stating “I hope they change their mind.”
Amodei cited OpenAI and Google as Anthropic’s key rivals for contracts. REUTERS
Concerns about China’s speedy development in AI skyrocketed about a yr in the past, when the Chinese firm DeepSeek claimed to have developed a model on par with US rivals for a fraction of the associated fee.
Amodei downplayed DeepSeek’s success, noting its fashions are “very optimized” to rating effectively in accordance to a “finite” record of benchmarks. Most of Anthropic’s competitors comes from OpenAI and Google, he added.
“I have almost never lost a deal, lost a contract to a Chinese model,” Amodei stated.
While the H200 is essentially the most highly effective chip made out there for sale in China, US export guidelines nonetheless block deliveries of Nvidia’s more superior Blackwell chips to Chinese prospects.
Amodei has often rankled opponents together with his frequent proclamations about AI security dangers. White House AI czar David Sacks has accused Amodei of being the foremost of a group of AI “doomers” who need to prioritize rules over progress.
Last fall, Amodei launched a prolonged assertion stating that Anthropic was aligned with Trump on “key areas of AI policy” and denying claims that his company was too “woke.”
The Post has sought remark from Nvidia.
