By Alexandra Alper and Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, March 5 (Reuters) - U.S. officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in U.S. AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of large numbers of chips, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The rules, which are not yet final and could change, would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to U.S. allies
and partners since President Donald Trump's administration said it rescinded its predecessor's so-called AI diffusion rules, which sought to keep a significant amount of AI infrastructure buildout in the U.S. and route most purchases through a handful of U.S. cloud computing companies.
According to a document seen by Reuters, even small chip installations of less than 1,000 chips could need a license. To qualify for an exemption, the exporter of the chips such as Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices would have to monitor them, and the recipient would have to agree to the use of software that would not allow the chips to be linked to other chips to form a larger "cluster," the term the AI industry uses to describe large groups of chips, according to the document.
In a statement on social media service X, the Commerce Department confirmed it was debating new rules, but said they would not be similar to what it described as a "burdensome, overreaching, and disastrous" framework proposed by the previous administration.
Instead, the Commerce Department said it would follow the mold of deals to send U.S. chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where both countries agreed to invest in the U.S.
"The Commerce Department is committed to promoting secure exports of the American tech stack," the department wrote. "We successfully advanced exports through our historic Middle East agreements, and there are ongoing internal government discussions about formalizing that approach."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nvidia and AMD did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper in Washington and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Chris Sanders)
