The CEO of privately held Anthropic had some choice comments for peer and investor NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) in a recent interview.
Here are the comments and why it could put the topic of selling AI chips to China back into the spotlight.
Anthropic CEO Criticizes Nvidia
During an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei may have made the comments heard around the world for the semiconductor sector, with criticism of investor Nvidia.
“The CEOs of these companies say, ‘it’s the embargo on chips that’s holding us back,'” Amodei said of the previous ban on exports to China, as reported by TechCrunch.
The U.S. recently reversed the ban and has approved the sale of H200 chips from Nvidia and chips from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) for sale to customers in China. The high-performance chips are mostly coveted for use for AI technology and platforms and were previously banned due to the thought that they could help China get ahead in the AI race.
“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.”
The Anthropic CEO said it’s not just about the AI race, as the chips could be a “national security” risk. Amodei’s analogy was one country having control of “100 million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner.”
“I think this is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and [bragging that] Boeing made the casings.”
Anthropic, Nvidia Relationship
Nvidia and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced a partnership with Anthropic in November 2025 that includes an investment of up to $15 billion in the company.
Anthropic currently runs on servers from Microsoft, Amazon and Google, with Nvidia as the company behind the GPUs that power the company’s AI models.
A “deep technology partnership” between Anthropic and Microsoft could become tense in the future after the comments from Amodei. The comments could also lead to Anthropic receiving a less-than-favorable relationship with the White House.
The ban on chip exports to China was a big storyline in 2025 and led to lower guidance and financial results for Nvidia. The ban reversal has investors and analysts trying to estimate how much additional upside Nvidia could have for exports to China.
Investors will now be watching the storyline between Anthropic and Nvidia, partnered companies that could quickly turn to rivals.
Photo: Shutterstock
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