Selling AI chips to China is comparable to supplying nuclear weapons to North Korea, according to Anthropic’s CEO.

Concerns Over AI Chip Sales to China

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, expressed strong reservations on Tuesday about U.S. companies, particularly Nvidia, selling advanced AI chips to China. He labeled such a decision a serious error, highlighting its significant national security risks.

Amodei, who has been vocal about the dangers associated with AI misuse, made these comments shortly after the Trump administration indicated that Nvidia could start selling its high-capacity H200 chips to China, with a portion of the profits going to the U.S. government.

“We’re ahead of China in chip production by several years, so shipping these chips would be a major mistake,” he remarked during a Bloomberg interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“I think this is crazy,” he added emphatically. “It’s like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.”

The technology sector in the U.S. and China is fiercely competing to develop ever more powerful AI systems, pushing towards the goal of artificial general intelligence that mimics human cognitive abilities. Critics argue that allowing China access to cutting-edge chips would undermine a crucial competitive edge for the U.S.

In spite of these issues, Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang have been advocating for eased export restrictions, arguing that lacking access to U.S. chips would merely push China to create its own versions.

Amodei believes that the U.S. ban on selling advanced AI chips is counterproductive, claiming “it’s holding us back.” He noted that even Chinese CEOs have acknowledged that the semiconductor embargo is detrimental to their progress.

He urged the Trump administration to rethink the easing of export limitations, stating, “I hope they change their mind.”

Worries about China’s rapid advancements in AI surged a year ago when DeepSeek, a Chinese firm, claimed to have built a model comparable to those from American companies but at a much lower cost. Amodei, however, was skeptical of DeepSeek’s achievements, describing its model as “highly optimized” for a limited set of benchmarks. He pointed out that his primary competitors are still OpenAI and Google.

He declared, “I have very rarely lost contracts to Chinese models.” While Nvidia’s H200 chip is the most powerful currently sold in China, U.S. export controls still restrict the more sophisticated Blackwell chips from reaching Chinese clients.

Amodei has repeatedly raised concerns regarding the safety implications of AI, sometimes drawing ire from his critics. For instance, White House AI czar David Sachs has labeled Amodei as the head of a faction seeking to prioritize regulation over innovation.