Nvidia and AMD are lobbying the Trump administration to halt potential new export restrictions on chips sold to China, according to a report by Benzinga.

The two U.S. GPU designers fear that a fresh round of export controls would cut off one of their largest revenue streams. China has long ranked among the biggest markets for both companies' data center accelerators, and any additional licensing requirements or outright bans on advanced AI chips would directly hit shipments of the product families at the core of their current growth.

The reported lobbying effort puts the chipmakers at odds with the direction of U.S. policy over the past several years. Successive administrations have tightened export controls on advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to make them, aiming to slow China's development of AI and high-performance computing capabilities. Each round of restrictions has forced Nvidia in particular to redesign products for the Chinese market — cutting performance to stay within the limits set by the Commerce Department.

For AMD, the calculus is similar. Its Instinct line of data center GPUs competes with Nvidia's accelerators, and China's hyperscalers and AI startups have been significant buyers of both vendors' silicon. Losing lawful access to that demand, the companies argue, would not eliminate Chinese AI development but would hand the market to competitors outside U.S. jurisdiction — a claim the industry has repeated each time Washington has widened the rules.

The report does not specify which restrictions are under consideration, their timeline, or which product categories they would cover. It also does not quote executives from either company or from the administration. Nvidia and AMD have not publicly confirmed the lobbying campaign described in the report.

What is confirmed is the commercial weight behind the effort. Nvidia's data center segment generates the majority of the company's revenue, and its AI accelerators — the Hopper and Blackwell families and their China-compliant variants — are the products most exposed to any new controls. AMD has been ramping Instinct GPU production as it pushes to take share in AI inference and training. Both companies' share prices have historically moved on export-control headlines, reflecting how much investor expectations already price in China-related risk.

The geopolitical context matters here because it changes the commercial picture directly. If the Trump administration proceeds with new restrictions, Nvidia and AMD would need to write down or rework China-bound inventory, as Nvidia has done in the past when prior rules stranded product in the channel. If the lobbying succeeds, the status quo of performance-capped China variants would likely continue, preserving a reduced but still substantial revenue line for both vendors.

Chinese domestic alternatives add a competitive dimension. Huawei and other local accelerator vendors have expanded their presence in China's AI compute market each time U.S. rules have tightened, and further restrictions would likely accelerate that substitution rather than slow Chinese AI investment, according to arguments the U.S. chip industry itself has made in prior lobbying rounds.

The administration has not announced a decision. Based on the report, the outcome will determine whether Nvidia and AMD keep selling cut-down accelerators into China or face a market exit that competitors are positioned to fill.