Technology

OpenAI Bit Its Tongue On China Chips To Keep Nvidia Happy, Report Finds

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The creator of ChatGPT has reportedly kept quiet about chip sales to China to stay in the good graces of its key supplier.

Executives at OpenAI have strayed away from declaring a definitive public stance advanced chip sales to China due to concerns that it could alienate chipmaker Nvidia, the Information reported Tuesday. This follows the Democratic takeover of Congress, which could lead to changes in restrictions that give China an edge in the AI race.

Nvidia reportedly also used its influence within the Trump administration to lobby conservative think tanks in Washington, the Information reported. One think tank was told that Nvidia’s donation to the organization was a “tough sell internally” after a fellow criticized the tech company’s relationship with China.

“NVIDIA is the vanguard of America’s effort to win the AI race and proud to honor longstanding U.S. policy,” a spokesperson for Nvidia said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “America cannot win the AI race unless America’s AI infrastructure wins worldwide — if the world’s clouds rely on foreign-made chips, the model and application layers will be foreign-built as well.”

Nvidia was permitted by the Trump administration in Dec. 2025 to sell H200 chips to China in a limited capacity.

The frontier lab says it generally supports tough export controls to enable the development of American AI.

“As we have made clear, OpenAI continues to support the strengthening of export controls,” Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, said in a statement, the Information reported. “Strong export controls will both support the build out of AI on democratic rails but also give the US and its allies more time to strengthen the safety standards, oversight and international coordination needed to help make sure people always stay in control of AI.”

OpenAI did not immediately respond to the DNCF’s request for comment.

“[Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang … You and your paid minions are fighting to sell millions of advanced AI chips to Chinese military companies like Alibaba and Tencent,” Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote on X on Jan. 17. Mast was referring to a right wing influencer campaign the company had reportedly coordinated to kill the AI OVERWATCH Act.

Introduced by Mast, the bill would restrict the sale of advanced AI chips to “countries of concern” and require the Commerce Department to approve such transactions.

Washington’s conflict with China over other chip deals affects not only Nvidia.

Facing pressure from Trump administration officials over the risk of Chinese access to chips, cloud compute giant Oracle terminated a $7 billion contract with Chinese firm Tencent on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

The contract would have leased 100,000 advanced AI chips to the Chinese tech firm from its Asia data centers over a period of five years, despite Washington’s export restrictions on sales to China.