Anthropic CEO Criticises U.S. Approval of AI Chip Exports to China at Davos

Following the U.S. administration’s decision to approve sales of high-performance AI chips from Nvidia and AMD to approved Chinese customers, debate over AI export controls has intensified. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, warned that allowing the export of advanced processors used to train AI models posed significant long-term national security risks for the United States.

Amodei argued that U.S. leadership in AI and semiconductor capability could be undermined by the move, framing advanced AI systems as strategically equivalent to large-scale cognitive infrastructure. His remarks were notable given Nvidia’s central role as a supplier of GPUs powering leading AI models and its recent multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic. The comments underscored growing tensions between AI developers, chipmakers, and policymakers as AI competition increasingly takes on geopolitical significance.