Their decision to poke a long-time partner shows how cutthroat the artificial intelligence game has become as everyone scrambles for any policy tweak that might hobble rivals while keeping their own data centres stuffed with silicon. Nvidia still wants the Chinese market despite loud security handwringing.
The proposed law would force chipmakers to satisfy US demand before shipping gear to China and other embargoed states. Lawmakers see it as one of the earliest attempts to corral exports that keep the AI training farms humming.
Vole jumped out front and publicly blessed the Gain AI Act while bods at Amazon’s cloud wing whispered their approval to Senate staffers, according to aides and those in the know. The plan would hand choicer access to chips for firms like Microsoft and Amazon across their global server farms.
Two tech giants backing the scheme could give it a shove even though some White House types, Nvidia and several chip outfits are muttering about it. Meta and Google are sitting on the fence, and so is President Trump.
Anthropic, which builds AI models and buys chips from Nvidia, Amazon and Google, is also cheering the plan, according to the same crowd.
Congress is toying with grafting the act into the National Defence Authorisation Act, which usually lands on the president’s desk around the end of the year. Support has popped up from Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, although Senate banking chair Tim Scott and senior House Republicans still hold the keys.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang chats with Trump about AI rules, and the outfit has spent nearly $3.5 million in the first three quarters of 2025, compared with $640,000 in all of 2024, according to OpenSecrets.
The Gain AI Act is testing Nvidia’s pull in Washington. It has a carve-out for trusted tech firms so they would not need export licences for shipments to regions such as the Middle East, which has delighted Microsoft and Amazon, who have complained of licence delays.
Nvidia dominates AI chips with roughly 80 per cent of the market, and its customers rarely pick public fights about policy.
Futurum Group lead semiconductor analyst Ray Wang said: “Usually, the tension between hyperscalers and Nvidia is about the product itself and pricing. Right now, that tension is getting more complicated.”
Nvidia and other chip houses claim the act would meddle with markets and risk future clampdowns. Some tech bosses swear they have enough chips in the US and reckon the real choke point is power.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Nvidia all declined to comment. Last month, Microsoft general manager of US public policy Gerry Petrella told a conference that the policy looked “really positive.”
White House AI czar David Sacks and other officials told Senator Jim Banks, who is sponsoring the act, that the plan would have a limited effect since the Commerce Department already oversees chip exports, according to several sources.
Supporters insist the law would head off shortages and hand US tech outfits an advantage. Banks has joined Senator Elizabeth Warren in slamming Nvidia’s exports to China.