Several United States lawmakers are looking into how advanced Nvidia chips may have gotten into the hands of the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which they also accused of spying on Americans on behalf of China.
House Representatives released a report on 16 April that they said "reveals that DeepSeek covertly funnels American user data to the Chinese Communist Party, manipulates information to align with CCP propaganda, and was trained using material unlawfully obtained from US AI models."
The lawmakers — Reps. John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois — said it appeared DeepSeek, which released a powerful AI model that made headlines in January, had used 60,000 chips from Nvidia despite US sanctions limiting the ability of the company to sell some of its hardware to China.
Nvidia is already having a tough week. Its stock fell nearly 7 percent on 16 April after the company announced that it had been informed that the Trump administration would require a new license for all accelerated chips shipping to China. The company said it expected a US$ 5.5 billion decrease in earnings due to the Trump administration's tariffs.
"DeepSeek isn't just another AI app — it's a weapon in the Chinese Communist Party's arsenal, designed to spy on Americans, steal our technology, and subvert US law," Moolenaar said in a statement, which called DeepSeek a "serious national security threat" to the US.
The lawmakers said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang directed the design of chips to get around US export controls.
They also sent a letter to Huang requesting lists of customers located in China and Southeast Asia and any communications between Nvidia and DeepSeek.
Nvidia said in a statement to Business Insider that "the US government instructs American business on what they can sell and where — we follow the government's directions to the letter."
The company also said it sells its products to companies worldwide, adding that its reported Singapore revenue indicates the billing addresses of its clients, many of which the company said are subsidiaries of US companies.
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