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The US Home of Representatives China committee has requested Nvidia to clarify whether or not and the way Chinese language firm DeepSeek obtained export-controlled chips to energy its synthetic intelligence app, which lawmakers say poses a nationwide safety menace.
John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the panel, and his Democratic counterpart Raja Krishnamoorthi on Wednesday wrote to Nvidia to acquire details about their gross sales to China and south-east Asia.
The letter got here after the panel launched a report that mentioned DeepSeek, which educated its mannequin on Nvidia chips, posed a “profound threat” to US nationwide safety.
Moolenaar mentioned DeepSeek was a “weapon in the Chinese Communist party’s arsenal, designed to spy on Americans, steal our technology, and subvert US law”.
The US has in recent times launched sweeping export controls designed to make it more durable for Chinese language teams to acquire superior American know-how that would assist its army.
Scrutiny from the committee will increase stress on Nvidia over whether or not its subtle chips are being covertly offered to China, which the corporate has lengthy mentioned it really works to keep away from.
Moolenaar claimed DeepSeek “exploited US AI models and reportedly used advanced Nvidia chips that should never have ended up in Chinese Communist party hands . . . That’s why we’re sending a letter to Nvidia to demand answers”.
Nvidia on Wednesday pushed again strongly in opposition to any suggestion it could be liable for export-controlled chips falling into the improper palms, saying it adopted the federal government’s instructions on the place it will probably or can’t promote chips “to the letter”.
“The technology industry supports America when it exports to well-known companies worldwide. If the government felt otherwise, it would instruct us,” Nvidia added.
The report got here a day after it emerged that the US had imposed export controls on Nvidia promoting H20 chips to China, blindsiding the corporate, which had anticipated reduction from the restrictions. In a regulatory submitting, it mentioned the controls would decrease its earnings by $5.5bn within the quarter to April 27.
Nvidia depends on a posh community of provide chain companions reminiscent of Dell and Supermicro, which package deal its chips into servers and promote on to prospects.
It addressed ideas within the congressional report that prospects in China could also be accessing its export-controlled chips by way of subsidiaries in Singapore, which accounted for 18 per cent of its 2025 fiscal 12 months income, or $23.7bn.
Nvidia mentioned the income it reviews from Singapore was based mostly on billing addresses, that means it typically included subsidiaries of US firms. “The associated products are shipped to other locations, including the United States and Taiwan, not to China,” it mentioned.
The China committee’s report mentioned DeepSeek transmitted knowledge utilizing infrastructure that was linked to China Cell, a serious Chinese language telecoms supplier that the Pentagon has designated as having connections to the nation’s army.
It added DeepSeek additionally built-in monitoring instruments from giant Chinese language tech teams, together with ByteDance, the proprietor of TikTok, along with Baidu, a Chinese language web search engine, and Tencent.
“This entangles DeepSeek’s data harvesting architecture with [People’s Republic of China] companies known for their roles in surveillance and CCP control, heightening the risk that foreign adversary entities could gain access to Americans’ private information,” the report mentioned.
DeepSeek couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.
China’s embassy in Washington mentioned the committee’s claims have been “groundless” and Beijing opposed the “overstretching of the concept of national security and the politicisation of economic, trade and technological issues”.
“The Chinese government attaches great importance to data privacy and security and protects them in accordance with the law. It has never required, nor will it require, companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data,” mentioned Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesperson.
DeepSeek sparked a tech market rout earlier this 12 months when it introduced breakthroughs that appeared to shift the stability of energy in an AI arms race between Washington and Beijing.
In January Nvidia had about $600bn wiped off its market valuation as traders reacted to reviews that DeepSeek had educated fashions that have been aggressive with the newest choices from teams reminiscent of OpenAI at a fraction of the associated fee and utilizing far much less computing energy.
DeepSeek mentioned it educated its “R1” mannequin utilizing clusters of Nvidia’s H800 chips, that are much less highly effective variations of its H100 chip. The H800 was particularly designed for the Chinese language market to adjust to US export controls and was later blocked by Joe Biden’s administration in 2023.
