Anthropic CEO criticises Nvidia and US administration at Davos

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei delivered a sharp critique of both the US administration and major chipmakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos after Washington approved the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips and a chip line from AMD to approved Chinese customers, following a reversal of an earlier ban.

The approval has proved controversial because the processors, while not the most advanced on the market, are still high-performance chips widely used for artificial intelligence workloads, according to reports. Speaking on Tuesday at Davos, Amodei criticised the decision and questioned claims by chip industry leaders that export restrictions are holding them back, warning that the move could ultimately harm US interests.

Amodei stated that the United States remains years ahead of China in its ability to design and manufacture advanced chips and informed Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, during an on-stage interview, that allowing such exports would be a serious strategic mistake. He warned that the decision carried significant national security implications given the growing power of AI systems, which he described as forms of cognition or intelligence capable of reshaping global power dynamics.

He went on to outline a stark scenario in which future AI could resemble a vast concentration of intellectual capability, likening it to tens of millions of individuals more intelligent than any Nobel laureate, all effectively controlled by a single nation. That framing, he suggested, illustrated why the export of AI-capable chips mattered so deeply.

Amodei described the administration’s decision as reckless and compared the move to selling weapons-grade technology to hostile states while celebrating the commercial success of the manufacturers involved, according to reports.

The criticism drew particular attention because Nvidia is not only a central supplier of the graphics processing units that power Anthropic’s AI models across cloud platforms operated by Microsoft, Amazon and Google, but is also a major investor in the company. Nvidia recently announced plans to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, alongside a deep technology partnership aimed at optimising each other’s systems.

That financial relationship was publicly unveiled just two months ago, with both companies highlighting close collaboration and shared technical goals. Against that backdrop, Amodei’s remarks in Davos marked a striking shift in tone, with the Anthropic chief openly likening the actions of his partner and the broader chip industry to those of an arms supplier, as reported.