Once afraid of offending Jensen Huang, OpenAI now supports 3 China chip restriction bills.

Beating AI News Flash: OpenAI has privately expressed support to U.S. lawmakers this week for three bills aimed at restricting China's access to advanced AI chips and manufacturing equipment.

This is not the first time OpenAI has supported chip controls against China. Last year, the company actively advocated restricting U.S. companies from selling high-end chips to China, but later stopped pushing Congress for stricter measures. OpenAI executives have long worried that publicly supporting tighter chip export controls against China would anger Jensen Huang and damage its partnership with Nvidia.

OpenAI and Nvidia are closely tied. Nvidia not only supplies GPUs to OpenAI but also supports OpenAI's data center construction through massive financing guarantees. Jensen Huang has long lobbied Washington in hopes of loosening chip sales restrictions against China.

Anthropic's stance has been more pronounced. In September of this year, the company directly withdrew from a tech industry association because it opposed the association's efforts to block chip control legislation.

Now, after a period of retreat, OpenAI is taking a stance again. The three bills it supports respectively require strengthened chip tracking, restrictions on the supply of chip manufacturing equipment to China, and increased congressional review of sensitive chip export licenses.

Jensen Huang resigned on November 12, dealing a blow to Nvidia's lobbying influence in Washington. Bipartisan lawmakers in Congress are seeking to include these restrictions in the year-end National Defense Authorization Act.