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The United States is scrapping the complex “AI Diffusion Rule,” set to take effect May 15, and drafting a leaner export-control regime that keeps strict limits on China but opens the door to one-on-one chip accords with nations such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Semiconductor heavyweights—led by Nvidia, long a vocal critic of the rule—cheered as shares spiked on the news. Key points:
- What’s gone: the tiered licensing framework that blanketed 40+ countries with caps on AI-grade GPUs.
- What stays: the hard stop on shipping cutting-edge chips into China; diversion hotspots (e.g., Malaysia, Thailand) still face targeted curbs.
- What’s next: the Commerce Department promises a “simpler, innovation-friendly” rule plus bilateral deals that could trade chip access for investment pledges.
- Why it matters: fast-tracking GPU flows helps countries build local AI cloud capacity and gives U.S. vendors a bigger addressable market—without loosening the China firewall.
- Market reaction: Nvidia up ~3%; the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained ~1.7% as investors bet on fresh demand from Middle-East data-center projects and global AI rollouts.
- Big voice: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argues wider export lanes will spur a trillion-dollar AI boom and cement U.S. tech leadership.
Expect a whirlwind of bespoke chip pacts in the months ahead—and plenty of jockeying among nations eager to tap the next AI-fuelled industrial revolution.