OpenAI's silence on China chip controls

OpenAI has stopped actively supporting strict U.S. chip export controls on China, a reversal from its position in early 2025 that congressional China hawks had been counting on. In March 2025, OpenAI lobbied the White House to maintain strict controls and expand the list of restricted chips. By June 2026, a policy framework it published omitted China by name, and in October 2025 it asked the White House to loosen some export rules for AI safety testing. The shift became visible as Congress prepared new chip restriction legislation, with aides and lobbyists noting OpenAI's silence. The company did not address its reported meetings with lawmakers or officials when asked for comment. Nvidia, which lobbies against chip restrictions, finalized a $30 billion equity investment in OpenAI in February 2026 and guaranteed up to $105 billion for the first phase of an Ohio data center it will exclusively supply to OpenAI. No quid pro quo between the policy shift and those financial arrangements has been reported. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly called U.S. export controls a failure, saying they reduced Nvidia's China market share from 95% to 50% while motivating China to accelerate its own chip development. Anthropic took the opposing position, publicly backing several chip restriction bills and leaving a major tech trade association in September 2025 over that association's efforts to reshape those bills.