NVIDIA has publicly criticized Biden-era AI export controls as misguided and praised a more hands-off regulatory approach.

In its final days, the Biden administration announced substantial last-minute adjustments to chip export controls through the Interim Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion. The White House stated that "to enhance U.S. national security and economic strength, it is essential that we do not offshore this critical technology and that the world's AI runs on American rails," and emphasized the importance of working with AI companies and foreign governments to establish security and trust standards. Nvidia responded sharply to the regulations, claiming in a press release that "the Biden Administration seeks to undermine America's leadership with a 200+ page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review," and arguing that by attempting to rig market outcomes and stifle competition, "the Biden Administration's new rule threatens to squander America's hard-won technological advantage," with Nvidia warning that "global progress is now in jeopardy."

The new export rules represent a fundamental shift from a blacklist to a whitelist system applicable to every country on the planet, with exceptions only for "18 key allies and partners." Companies now fall into three classifications based on their location and security compliance: Universal Verified End Users (UVEUs) located in closely aligned countries, National Verified End Users (NVEUs) meeting security standards but in countries of concern, and non-VEUs. The regulations establish computational capacity limits, with NVEUs able to purchase equivalent to no more than 320,000 "advanced GPUs" within two years, while non-VEU companies are capped at 50,000 per country. However, the administration exempted orders not exceeding the computational power of 1,700 advanced GPUs from these caps, claiming this represents the vast majority of shipments and constitutes an improvement over prior regulations.

UVEUs face different constraints, permitted to "place up to 7% of their global AI computational capacity in countries around the world," meaning 93 percent of a company's total data center throughput must remain in the U.S. or allied nations. Notably, Nvidia declined to address specifics regarding company designations or chip caps, instead expressing nostalgia for the first Trump administration's approach to tech regulation, arguing that President Trump "laid the foundation for America's current strength and success in AI." The company's statement made its political positioning clear, concluding that "America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach," and expressing that it looks "forward to a return to policies that strengthen American leadership, bolster our economy and preserve our competitive edge in AI and beyond." This positioning reflects broader efforts by the tech industry to establish ties with the incoming administration, particularly given that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has expressed in a Bloomberg interview his desire to meet with Trump and help him succeed in his second term.