US drafts rules requiring American approval for all AI chip exports worldwide: Bloomberg
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The news: The US has drafted rules that would restrict AI chip exports to anywhere in the world without American approval, giving Washington sweeping control over who can build AI infrastructure globally, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.
The proposed rules would expand curbs currently covering around 40 countries and set up the US Commerce Department as gatekeeper for the global AI industry, according to the report.
The rules would not be framed as an Nvidia export ban, but as a licensing regime governing virtually all sales of AI accelerators from the likes of Nvidia and AMD, Bloomberg said. The framework is not yet finalised and could change substantially or be shelved, it added.
According to the news agency, the approval process would scale with computing power. Shipments of up to 1,000 of Nvidia’s latest GB300 GPUs would undergo a fairly simple review, while companies building bigger clusters would need preclearance and could face conditions such as disclosing their business models or allowing US government site visits.
For deployments exceeding 200,000 GB300 GPUs owned by one company in a single country, the host government would need to get involved. The US would only approve the latter exports to allies making stringent security commitments and matching investments in American AI, though no investment ratio has been specified.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, Nvidia and AMD have not commented.
The numbers: Nvidia shares fell about 2% after the report, with AMD also over 2% lower on the news.
The source: Bloomberg
