On September 2, local time, the U.S. Senate announced a preliminary version of its annual defense policy plan.These include requiring U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chip manufacturers to prioritize domestic orders before supplying high-performance AI chips to overseas buyers, and explicitly calling for a refusal to export the most high-end AI GPUs.

Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are calling their initiative the Guaranteed Access and Innovation in National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2025 (GAIN AI Act), and their goal is to ensure that U.S. "small businesses, startups and universities" have access to the latest AI chips from NVIDIA, AMD and others before customers in other countries.

However, if the bill becomes a formal law, it will deal a heavy blow to American AI chip companies, as it will have a great negative impact on their overseas revenue.

“Advanced AI chips are the jet engine that will keep the U.S. AI industry at the forefront over the next decade,” said Brad Carson, President of America for Responsible Innovation (ARI). "Globally, these chips are currently in tight supply, meaning every advanced AI chip sold abroad is a chip that cannot be used to accelerate U.S. R&D and economic growth. As we compete to lead in this dual-use technology, including the GAIN AI Act in the NDAA would be a major win for U.S. economic competitiveness and national security."

The GAIN AI Act requires developers of U.S. AI chips such as Nvidia and AMD to first give U.S. buyers the opportunity to purchase advanced AI hardware before selling their products to foreign countries, including European countries or allies such as the United Kingdom and competitors such as China.

To that end, the bill proposes establishing export controls on all "advanced" GPUs (more on that later) shipped outside the United States and denying export licenses for the "most powerful AI chips."

If you want to obtain an export license for advanced AI chips, the exporter must confirm that the following conditions are met:

1. US customers have the right of first refusal;

2. There is no backlog of pending orders in the United States;

3. Exports are not expected to cause inventory delays or reduce U.S. buyers’ manufacturing capabilities;

4. The pricing or contract terms provided do not favor foreign recipients or disadvantage U.S. customers;

5. Foreign entities will not use U.S. exports to undermine U.S. competitors outside their domestic markets;

Under the proposal, if one of the certifications is missing, the export request must be denied.

Perhaps equally important, the bill sets precise standards for what U.S. lawmakers consider "advanced integrated circuits," or advanced artificial intelligence chips.

If any one of the following criteria is met, it can be considered an "advanced integrated circuit" or advanced artificial intelligence chip:

1. Can provide a total processing performance (TPP) score of 2400 or higher, calculated as the listed processing power times the number of bits in TFLOPS (e.g., TFLOPS or TOPS for 8/16/32/64 bits), without sparsity.

Processors with a TPP of 4800 or higher are considered too powerful and cannot be exported regardless of the destination country.

2. Provide performance density (PD) index exceeding 3.2. PD is counted by dividing TPP by the die area measured in square millimeters.

3. DRAM bandwidth exceeds 1.4 TB/s, interconnect bandwidth exceeds 1.1 TB/s, or the combined bandwidth of DRAM and interconnect exceeds 1.7 TB/s.

Essentially, U.S. Senate lawmakers plan to export control of all advanced AI chips, including Nvidia's HGX H20 (because of high memory bandwidth) or L2 PCIe (because of high-performance density), which have been around for about two years now.

So if the proposed proposal ends up being passed as law and signed by the President, it would once again restrict sales of Nvidia's HGX H20, AMD's Instinct MI308, etc. to all customers outside the United States.

Additionally, GPUs with a TPP of 4800 or higher will be prohibited from export,So Nvidia won't be able to sell its H100 and more advanced GPUs outside the U.S. because even the H100 has a TPP score of 16,000 (the B300 has a TPP score of 60,000).