Selling AI chips to China is like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea: Anthropic CEO | Latest Tech News
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday that US corporations like Nvidia mustn’t promote their superior artificial intelligence chips to China – calling the transfer a major mistake with “incredible national security implications.”
Amodei, recognized for his dire warnings about the potential misuse of AI fashions, spoke out weeks after the Trump administration said 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 said during an interview with Bloomberg at 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 in the hops of attaining synthetic basic intelligence — a model with human-level cognitive skills.
Critics argue permitting China to access the best chips will remove a key benefit for the US.
Despite such issues, 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 access ones that are made in the US.
Amodei said 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 said. “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 called 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 fast 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 fee.
Amodei downplayed DeepSeek’s success, noting its fashions are “very optimized” to rating nicely according to a “finite” listing 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 said.
While the H200 is the most highly effective chip made accessible for sale in China, US export guidelines still block deliveries of Nvidia’s more superior Blackwell chips to Chinese clients.
Amodei has often rankled opponents 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 laws 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.
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