Otherwise China will benefit

Microsoft urges Trump to ease AI chip restrictions

Microsoft is an important financial backer of the ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

(Bild: LIONEL BONAVENTURE)

According to a newspaper report, Microsoft wants to lobby US President Donald Trump to ease export restrictions on AI chips to allied countries. Otherwise China will end up benefiting.

According to the US software company, there is a risk that allies will turn to China as a supplier, wrote the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, citing a blog post that is said to be about to be published.

The People's Republic is already using the embargo to present itself as a trustworthy partner, the paper quoted Microsoft President Brad Smith as saying. "Their message is that these countries can't rely on the US, but China is willing to give them what they need." Microsoft could not initially be reached for comment.

Export quotas for 120 countries
Trump's predecessor Joe Biden had restricted the export of certain high-performance chips for artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies shortly before the end of his term of office in January. Among other things, he imposed export quotas for 120 countries. Germany is one of just 18 countries that will continue to have unrestricted access. The current government is considering tightening the embargo but simplifying the export regulations, wrote the Wall Street Journal, citing insiders.

In order to slow down China's technological and military rise, the USA has largely banned the export of high technology to the People's Republic. As a result, the country intensified the development of its own processors. In terms of performance, these do not yet come close to the top models from world market leader Nvidia. However, since the triumph of the Chinese AI DeepSeek, which makes do with less computing power, this disadvantage no longer seems so serious.