Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday that US firms like Nvidia should not sell their advanced artificial intelligence chips to China – calling the move a major mistake with “incredible national security implications.”
Amodei, known for his dire warnings about the potential misuse of AI models, spoke out weeks after the Trump administration said Nvidia could resume the sale of its powerful H200 chips to China – with 25% of proceeds going to the US government.
“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.
“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 powerful AI models in the hops of achieving artificial general intelligence — a model with human-level cognitive abilities.
Critics argue allowing China to access the best chips will eliminate a key advantage for the US.
Despite such concerns, Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang have argued vigorously in favor of lifting export curbs, asserting that China will simply make its own chips if it can’t access ones that are made in the US.
Amodei said the previous US ban on the sale of advanced 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.”
Concerns about China’s rapid advancement in AI skyrocketed about a year ago, when the Chinese firm DeepSeek claimed to have developed a model on par with US rivals for a fraction of the cost.
Amodei downplayed DeepSeek’s success, noting its models are “very optimized” to score well according to a “finite” list of benchmarks. Most of Anthropic’s competition 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 powerful chip made available for sale in China, US export rules still block deliveries of Nvidia’s more advanced Blackwell chips to Chinese customers.
Amodei has occasionally rankled opponents with his frequent proclamations about AI safety risks. White House AI czar David Sacks has accused Amodei of being the foremost of a group of AI “doomers” who want to prioritize regulations over progress.
Last fall, Amodei released a lengthy statement 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 comment from Nvidia.
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