Nvidia’s Huang Skips Senate Hearing on AI Chip Exports, Drawing Warren’s Rebuke

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has turned down a Senate invitation to testify this week about the company’s China business and its outsized role in the AI boom, intensifying a political standoff over how tightly to control advanced chip exports. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had pressed Huang to appear before the Banking Committee on Thursday for a hearing on U.S. AI leadership, innovation, and national security. In a letter, Huang said he was “unable to attend” but offered to host lawmakers at Nvidia’s Santa Clara headquarters instead.

Warren fired back, noting that Huang found time for a high-dollar Mar-a-Lago dinner and a trip to Beijing with President Trump in May, where he joined other CEOs in meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. “The American people deserve answers in a public forum,” Warren said. The exchange highlights the growing tension in Washington over whether to widen global sales of cutting-edge AI chips or tighten restrictions to keep them from China and other rivals.

Huang, who sits on Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has long argued that U.S. companies should be allowed to compete in China. “We should offer the most competitive chips we can to the Chinese market,” he told reporters in December. Warren has criticized that stance, warning it could “turbocharge China’s military and undercut American technological leadership.” For now, Nvidia remains at the center of the debate—without its CEO in the witness chair.