An unusual Senate duo is pressing powerhouse chipmaker Nvidia on plans to open a research-and-development center in Shanghai, arguing the company is helping China’s defense and technology capabilities.
Sens. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that Nvidia’s “recent decision raises significant national security and economic security issues that warrant serious review."
“It is troubling that American firms are helping the PRC build cutting-edge semiconductor capacity, which will aid the country’s defense-industrial complex and techno-authoritarian capacity,” the pair wrote in a 4-page letter to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday.
The lawmakers are asking Nvidia what research and engineering activities will take place at the facility, which nodes and types of chips will be researched and how much money the chip manufacturer plans to spend on it. They also asked how many and what kinds of researchers will work at the facility.
Huang said to reporters in late April that 50 percent of the world’s artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are Chinese.
“This is the industry that we will have to compete for,” the executive said.
“Given this leading position as an American company, NVIDIA has a responsibility to consider the significant national security implications of the use and misuse of its products,” the senators told Huang. “This innovation should occur within the sphere of close democratic allies who share our values and commitment to responsible deployment of these emerging technologies.”
An Nvidia spokesperson told The Hill in an emailed statement that the company is “simply leasing a new space for existing employees, who need the room in the post-COVID return to work” and that the “scope of work will remain unchanged."
The effort by the upper chamber lawmakers to press Nvidia marks an uncommon collaboration between Warren, a progressive stalwart, and Banks, a close President Trump ally and an "America First" conservative.
The two also teamed up earlier this year, opening a bipartisan investigation into the role of private equity in the rising costs of fire trucks.
Nvidia is in a delicate position, looking to preserve its ability to benefit from both Chinese and U.S. markets, along with adhering to new export controls imposed by the Trump administration.
Huang said last week that the export controls are a disservice to the California-based company and that Nvidia has lost market share to its competition in China over the past four years.
“The local companies are very talented and very determined, and the export controls give them the spirit, energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang said during an industry conference on May 21 in Taipei, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Nvidia penned a deal earlier in May that would allow the United Arab Emirates to import half a million of the company’s most advanced AI chips every year.
Nvidia reported strong quarterly earnings this week, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations in light of the export controls in place. The company’s revenue went up from $26 billion in the first quarter of 2024 to $44 billion in the first quarter of 2025, jumping by 69 percent year over year. Its data center business revenue rose from $22.6 billion to $39.1 billion over the same timeline. Tighter export controls will end up costing Nvidia $5.5 billion for exporting H20 chips to China.
“NVIDIA’s great financial and technology success was built on American innovation, American university research funded by taxpayers, and the capital, security, and freedom we provide — not through collaboration with autocracies,” the senators wrote in their letter.
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