Shares of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) moved lower on Thursday after reports emerged that the U.S. administration is preparing draft regulations that would tighten export controls on advanced AI accelerators. NVDA fell about 1.7% in afternoon trading while AMD slid roughly 2% as investors reacted to the potential policy changes.
According to individuals familiar with the matter cited in reporting, the draft framework would expand current export restrictions - which today apply to roughly 40 countries - to a worldwide regime. Under the proposed rules, companies would need to secure approval from the U.S. government for nearly all exports of AI accelerators produced by Nvidia and AMD.
The draft would place shipments of up to 1,000 of Nvidia's newest GB300 graphics processing units under a review process that allows for some exemptions. Shipments larger than that would require pre-clearance prior to seeking export licenses and could be subject to specific conditions. Those conditions might include disclosures about business models or on-site visits by government officials, according to the reporting.
For very large deployments - defined in the draft as more than 200,000 GB300 GPUs owned by a single company in a single country - the host government would be expected to take part in the approval process. The U.S. would approve such exports only to allied countries that provide security commitments and make matching investments in American AI capabilities, though the draft does not specify a numerical investment ratio.
Officials drafting the rules stated the measures are not intended to amount to an export ban. Instead, the proposal would establish the Commerce Department as the central gatekeeper for AI hardware exports. Both commercial firms and foreign governments would need Commerce Department sign-off to purchase the chips that power large-scale AI services offered by companies such as OpenAI and Alphabet.
The reported framework would give Washington the authority to determine whether and under what conditions countries can build and operate facilities for training and running artificial-intelligence models using these accelerators. The proposal would thereby link export approvals to allied security commitments and investments in U.S.-based AI capabilities.
What this means for markets
Equities of major chip suppliers moved down on the news as the potential for broader, more stringent export controls could affect global supply, customer access, and commercial deployment plans for large AI systems. The proposal centers on high-performance accelerators used by cloud and AI service providers.