Nvidia and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sales to US government

Chip Giants Nvidia and AMD agreed to pay the US government 15% of Chinese income in an “unprecedented” agreement to obtain export licenses to China, BBC said.

The United States had previously prohibited the sale of powerful chips used in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) to China under export controls generally linked to national security problems.

Security experts, some of whom were used during the first term of President Donald Trump, recently wrote to the administration expressing “a deep concern” that the Nvidia chip H20 was “a powerful accelerator” of the capacities of the Chinese AI.

NVIDIA told BBC: “We follow the rules that the US government has for our participation in global markets.”

He added: “Although we have not shipped H20 to China for months, we hope that the export control rules will allow America to compete in China and in the world.”

AMD did not immediately respond to a request for comments. The White House refused to comment.

Under the agreement, Nvidia will pay 15% of her income from the H20 flea sales in China to the United States government.

AMD will also give 15% of the income generated by sales of its MI308 chip in China to the Trump administration, which was reported for the first time by the Financial Times.

The H20 chip was developed specifically for the Chinese market after the American export restrictions were imposed by the Biden administration in 2023. Its sale was effectively prohibited by the Trump government in April of this year.

Nvidia’s chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, spent months lobbying the two parties for a return to flea sales in China. He would have met US President Donald Trump last week.

“You have either a national security problem, or you don’t,” said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation.

“If you have a 15%payment, this does not somehow eliminate the problem of national security,” she added.

In a letter last month to the US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, a group of 20 security specialists said that if the largest NVIDIA H20 chips buyers were civil societies in China, they expect them to be used by the army.

They wrote: “Optimized for IA inference will not simply feed consumer products or factory logistics; they will allow autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms and rapid progress in decision-making of the battlefield.”

In a declaration to the BBC, Nvidia said: “America cannot repeat 5G and lose leadership of telecommunications. The America of AI Tech can be the global standard if we run.”

Charlie Dai, vice-president and principal analyst of the World Research Company Forrester, said that the agreement to present more than 15% of Chinese flea sales to the US government in exchange for export licenses was “unprecedented”.

“The arrangement highlights the high cost of market access in the midst of technological trade tensions, creating substantial financial pressure and strategic uncertainty for technological suppliers,” he added.

The resumption of flea sales at China occurs while trade tensions between Beijing and Washington have softened.

Beijing has softened rare earth export controls, while the United States has lifted restrictions on flea design software companies operating in China.

In May, the two largest economies in the world agreed with a 90 -day truce in their price war.

Since then, the senior trade officials on both sides have met several times, although an agreement to extend the price break has not yet been confirmed before a deadline of August 12.

As part of his commercial policy, Trump has put pressure on large companies to make more investments in the United States.

Last week Apple said it would invest $ 100 billion (74.4 billion pounds Sterling) in the country, adding a previous commitment to spending $ 500 billion in the United States over the next four years.

In June, Memory Chip Maker Technology said its investments planned in the United States will total $ 200 dollars. This includes building a new Idaho manufacturing plant.

Nvidia herself announced her intention to build servers of AI in the United States worth $ 500 billion, committing to building the first AI superordinators who are fully manufactured American.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Intel boss will meet Trump in the White House after the president called for his immediate resignation because of his links with China.

Last week, Trump said on social networks that Lip-Bu Tan was “very conflicting”, apparently referring to his alleged investments in companies which, according to the United States, were linked to the Chinese army.

Mr. Tan rejected, declaring that it was “disinformation”.