EU gets a win as US revokes AI chips caps

BRUSSELS — The European Union secured a rare transatlantic win after the U.S. decided on Tuesday to roll back upcoming Biden-era caps on the export of artificial intelligence chips.

As one of its final acts in office, the Biden administration in January placed some EU countries into a group that would continue to have unlimited access to sought-after AI chips, while others, among them Poland, would have their access restricted from May 15. AI chips are key to training the most complex AI models and vital for the EU’s AI plans.

The U.S. Commerce Department announced on Tuesday that it had started the process of rescinding those planned export controls to so-called second-tier countries, much to the European Commission’s delight.

Spokesperson Thomas Regnier told POLITICO that the Commission welcomed the U.S. decision to rescind the rule. “We are pleased that the Administration recognizes that the AI Diffusion Rule would undermine U.S. diplomatic relations with dozens of countries by downgrading them to second-tier status,” Regnier said.

The reversal could ease tensions after a months-long attack by the American administration and tech executives on the EU’s rules on content moderation, digital competition and artificial intelligence.

The European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen is in the U.S. Wednesday, where she will meet with representatives from Nvidia, a critical supplier of AI chips.

Virkkunen and her trade colleague Maroš Šefčovič had pushed back against the planned U.S. export controls.

Both said after the U.S. imposed the rules in January that it’s in the “U.S. economic and security interest that the EU buys advanced AI chips from the U.S. without limitations.” Virkkunen said this is an area where the EU will buy from the U.S., appealing to the Trump administration’s trade deficit grievances.

Some EU countries had contacted the U.S. separately seeking to better understand the caps, which would have affected their ambitious AI plans. Poland, in particular, was one of those second-tier countries that would have been restricted in buying U.S. AI chips. For months, the country tried to understand why it was in tier two but never got a clear answer from Washington, so it kept on pushing to have the rule revoked.

The threat of U.S. caps has inspired the EU to review its chip-making plan, the Chips Act, with AI chips at the center.