- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Donald Trump and criticized the proposed GAIN AI Act’s chip export restrictions.
- Lawmakers have now removed the chip export proposal from the annual defense bill.
- Huang also warned that state-level AI laws would harm US innovation and national security.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang isn’t known for wading into the political fray, but this week he made an exception for some quality time in Washington, DC. He met with President Trump to argue against the GAIN AI Act and its proposed rule requiring U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD to prioritize domestic buyers before selling advanced AI chips abroad.
The law was presented as a way to keep the United States 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, but not this one.
“The AI GAIN Act is even more harmful to the United States than the AI Diffusion Act,” Huang said at a press conference after the meeting. He described it as “wise” that legislators are moving away from the plan.
For Nvidia, which is the undisputed global heavyweight in AI hardware, that kind of disruption would be like asking Boeing to fly with half an engine. Its chips already dominate cloud computing and generative AI development around the world. Losing the freedom to sell to vetted international customers without a government-imposed queue would erode its advantage 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 results as a reason to oppose the GAIN AI Act. The law would have forced companies like Nvidia to delay orders for foreign chips while confirming that there was no pending demand in the U.S. But, he said, giving American institutions and companies a fair chance to obtain high-end AI chips before foreign markets would also slow innovation by rivals, complicate global logistics and harm the United States’ 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 improvements in AI for everyone. Although if he’s wrong, American companies will find it harder to compete if foreign groups can get their hands on all the most powerful chips.
Mosaic AI rules
That wasn’t Huang’s only legislative foe this week. He met with lawmakers to criticize a separate idea that is gaining traction among U.S. states: local regulation of AI. “State-by-state regulation of AI would cripple this industry,” Huang warned. “It would create a national security concern.”
If AI laws start to diverge wildly in California, Texas, New York, and every other state, it could create a compliance nightmare for developers. Imagine needing to modify your chatbot’s features based on the zip code your user lives in. Bills proposing different standards for disclosure, bias, transparency, and security in artificial intelligence systems are circulating in at least 30 states.
Trump reportedly echoed Huang’s concerns during their meeting and publicly endorsed the idea of a national standard that would override state laws. So far, the NDAA doesn’t have that kind of rule, but if it becomes a real issue, it could end up in the bill next year.
For tech critics, this is familiar territory: Big Tech is pushing for a single federal standard to avoid dealing with 50 regulatory headaches. And it’s not that regulatory friction can’t bother the average AI user. It would be like 50 different versions of the GDPR, but without any way to comply with it in its entirety.
The shelving of the GAIN AI Act is, depending on your point of view, a sign that lawmakers are not ready to clip the wings of America’s largest chip company, or that they are in thrall to powerful and wealthy corporate interests. Or both. And while the future of AI regulation at all levels is still in flux, Huang has outlined what the most powerful players in technology see 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 moves fast, who slows down, and how much trust we’re placing in a handful of companies to shape the technology infrastructure of the next decade.
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