'There's no question that Congress is going to push for a complete ban on the sale of advanced semiconductors into China,' says a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is shown going to a December 2025 meeting with the Senate Banking Committee to discuss export controls on chips and AI regulation.
Nvidia has been setting records with its spending on Washington lobbying, but the outlays now aren't expected to help much, with lawmakers from both parties souring on the chip company's policy preferences in the wake of its spy scandal.
After putting at least $4.97 million toward influencing Washington last year, Nvidia has disclosed lobbying spending of $4.69 million in this year's first three quarters, putting the maker of artificial-intelligence chips on pace for a new company spending record by year's end. That's shown in the below chart, which comes from OpenSecrets, a watchdog organization.
Nvidia's annual lobbying spending reached $4.69 million through the third quarter this year.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Congress now will likely object to "the company's default policy position - that it should be permitted to sell large numbers of AI chips to customers in China," said Ryan Fedasiuk, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Foundation for American Innovation, in a social-media post. They'll probably also have objections to the company's aggressive lobbying efforts, Fedasiuk said.
A wide range of analysts have said bills in Congress that aim to curb Chinese companies' access to certain Nvidia chips now have a higher likelihood of becoming law through an annual defense package that's expected to get enacted next month.
"I think there's no question that Congress is going to push for a complete ban on the sale of advanced semiconductors into China. That was President Biden's decision four years ago, and it had tremendous Republican as well as Democratic support," said Nicholas Burns, who served as the U.S. ambassador to China during the Biden administration, in a CNBC interview on Wednesday.
"The reason is because we don't want that technology in the hands of the People's Liberation Army to compete with our military," added Burns, who also held ambassadorial posts during the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations. "We certainly also don't want to give Chinese tech firms a leg up, and so there are national security reasons to do this."
With its increased lobbying spending, Nvidia's use of lobbyists has jumped as well, rising to 34 so far this year - up from 31 last year and just seven in 2024. That's shown in the chart below, which is based on OpenSecrets data. The lobbying firms working with Nvidia this year include BGR Group, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Nickles Group, Tiber Creek Group and Vogel Group.
The number of Nvidia lobbyists has been rising, to 34 this year.
Nvidia's outlay on influencing Washington remains below the amounts shelled out by Washington's biggest lobbying organizations, as well as other tech giants. So far this year, Meta Platforms (META) has spent $19 million, Amazon (AMZN) has paid out $14.5 million, and Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) has spent $14.3 million, according to OpenSecrets data. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors is No. 1 in lobbying spending in 2026 with $57.6 million, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is second with $54.6 million.
Nvidia announced Sunday that its board of directors is probing whether its CEO, Jensen Huang, was targeted as part of a foreign-intelligence scheme. Huang sent an email to Nvidia employees on Sunday admitting to an extramarital affair, but President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the CEO told him that he "had absolutely no idea" that his mistress was a possible Chinese spy.
Nvidia shares (NVDA) were rallying Wednesday, after dropping on Monday and Tuesday. The stock's still in the red for the week, down about 6%, and it has lost 23% over the past month.
Now read: Nvidia's valuation tumbles to a 15-year low. A bargain or a falling knife?
-Victor Reklaitis
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