The Trump administration’s draft rules requiring US approval for all global AI chip exports sent Nvidia down 1.8%, AMD down 2.2%, and Micron down 3.4%, while AI-linked crypto tokens fell in tandem.
The Pentagon separately flagged Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” one of the first times a US government agency has applied that designation to a domestic tech company.
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Why it matters:
- Nvidia and AMD are the dominant suppliers of AI accelerators — graphics processing units (GPUs) used by data centers worldwide to train and run artificial intelligence models.
- A US licensing gate on AI chip exports gives Washington direct control over which countries can build AI infrastructure, reshaping global data center investment plans
- Project delays from bureaucratic bottlenecks could stall multi-billion-dollar data center commitments already underway across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia
- AI-linked crypto tokens face sustained pressure as investor confidence in unconstrained AI infrastructure growth weakens
The details:
- Draft rules would require companies to obtain Commerce Department approval before exporting virtually any AI accelerator globally, per Bloomberg
- Shipments of up to 1,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs would receive a streamlined review; larger clusters require pre-clearance with potential site-visit conditions
- Deployments exceeding 200,000 GB300 GPUs — the scale of NScale’s contract with Microsoft — would require host-government agreements and “matching” US investments
- The Kobeissi Letter reported the Pentagon’s Anthropic designation via X (Twitter) on March 5, 2025
- Bittensor (TAO), Near Protocol (NEAR), Render, and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) fell by around 5% following the news.
The big picture:
- The draft reverses Biden’s AI diffusion rule, which Trump officials had criticized as overly burdensome, but may impose comparable or greater friction through a licensing regime
- Countries face a binary choice: US chips under Washington’s approval process, or Huawei accelerators — which the US warns may violate American trade restrictions
- Trump has previously threatened chip export controls as leverage in digital services tax disputes with the EU
