At a Glance
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei compared U.S. approval of high-performance chip sales to China with “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea”
- Nvidia, a major Anthropic partner and up-to-$10 billion investor, supplies the GPUs powering the company’s AI models
- The U.S. reversed an earlier ban last week, allowing Nvidia’s H200 chips and AMD’s line to reach approved Chinese buyers
- Why it matters: The rare public attack on a key partner signals rising tension between national-security fears and commercial AI interests
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei used a Davos stage on Tuesday to blast the U.S. administration’s decision to let American chipmakers ship high-performance AI processors to China, warning the move “is going to come back to bite the U.S.” and branding it “crazy.”
The outburst is striking because one of the companies poised to profit from the export green-light, Nvidia, is both Anthropic’s exclusive GPU supplier and a fresh investor that has pledged up to $10 billion into the AI lab.
The Export Reversal
Last week Washington formally reversed an earlier restriction and okayed sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips and a matching AMD line to vetted Chinese customers. While not the firms’ most cutting-edge silicon, the processors are still classified as high-performance AI hardware, a category the White House had previously sought to wall off from Beijing.
Speaking to Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief at the World Economic Forum, Amodei rejected the argument that looser export rules help American competitiveness. “The CEOs of these companies say, ‘It’s the embargo on chips that’s holding us back,'” he said, voicing disbelief. “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.”
“Country of Geniuses in a Data Center”
The Anthropic chief escalated his warning by describing next-generation AI as cognition rather than software. “Imagine 100 million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner,” he said, all resident in one country’s data centers. Handing Beijing the hardware to build such systems, he argued, carries “incredible national-security implications.”
Then came the headline-grabber: “I think this is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and [bragging that] Boeing made the casings.”
Nvidia’s Central Role
Nvidia is not a casual supplier to Anthropic. Every cloud provider hosting Claude needs Nvidia GPUs, making the chipmaker the literal engine of Anthropic’s models. Two months ago the pair trumpeted a “deep technology partnership” along with the massive cash infusion, promising mutual optimization of hardware and software.
Fast-forward to Davos and that same partner is now likened to an arms dealer.
Why Amodei Can Afford the Jab
Several factors may explain the bluntness:
- Fundraising firepower: Anthropic has raised billions and is valued in the hundreds of billions, according to Sarah L. Montgomery‘s reporting.
- Product pull: Developers routinely rank Claude among the top-tier coding assistants for complex, real-world projects.
- Market leverage: With cloud giants courting multiple model providers, Anthropic’s dependence on Nvidia is mutual; the chipmaker needs showcase customers as much as startups need GPUs.
A New Normal in AI Politics
The episode hints that existential fears around AI have overridden traditional business etiquette. Amodei left the stage without walking back the nuclear-proliferation analogy, suggesting he sees little risk of retaliation from Washington or investors.
If the AI race is now framed in national-security terms, blunt public attacks on partners may become routine rather than remarkable.
Key Takeaways
- The U.S. has opened a fresh channel for high-performance AI chips to reach China, reversing an earlier ban
- Anthropic’s CEO responded with a rare public rebuke of both government policy and a key corporate backer
- Nvidia, now labeled metaphorically alongside arms manufacturers, still supplies the GPUs that power Anthropic’s models
- With multibillion-dollar valuations and developer loyalty, Anthropic appears confident it can survive any fallout
