For months now, I’ve heard about widespread fear among think tank researchers and policy experts who publish work against NVIDIA’s interests.
NVIDIA is the most valuable company on Earth, the dominant supplier of AI chips, and is currently valued at 4.5 trillion dollars. I worry that fear of its potential retaliation—rumors of attempted firings and media hit pieces—is distorting some of the most important AI policy debates.
Based on what I’ve heard, there is no smoking gun of wrongdoing, but certainly a pattern of fear that impacts policy discussion, justified or not. This fear isn’t just limited to think tank staffers either: I’ve heard many concerning claims that the major AI companies disagree with NVIDIA’s policy stances and know that its talking points are flawed, but are unwilling to speak out because NVIDIA has the power to undermine their business.
To date, these details have mostly dripped out in isolated places online, and so I’ve done the legwork to document and consolidate them to one place, in addition to speaking with a wide range of sources for further substantiation.
NVIDIA, the AI boom, and chip sales to China
NVIDIA’s stock has surged as a consequence of the AI boom, way more than I think people realize.
At ChatGPT’s launch, NVIDIA was already roughly a top 30 company worldwide, valued at roughly $400B. Since ChatGPT’s launch, NVIDIA has grown in value by more than four trillion dollars. This growth is roughly like swallowing the entirety of Microsoft and Apple, circa 2022, which were themselves the two largest companies in the world at that time.
NVIDIA’s remarkable growth faces some threats, however: like the possibility that it might be restricted from selling its advanced AI chips to China.
This is one of today’s most important national security debates: Given that both US political parties want to avoid authoritarian countries surpassing the US’s lead on artificial intelligence, is it better to be willing to sell our leading chips to China, or to hold back from doing so?
The US has flipped back and forth on this policy position throughout 2025, and the outcome is meaningful for NVIDIA’s financials, with billions of dollars of revenue at stake and thus a significant incentive to shape the debate.
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