AI, Nvidia and AMD to pay 15% to the United States on chip sales in China

Semiconductor giants Nvidia and AMD will pay 15% of their advanced AI chip sales in China to the United States , sources familiar with the deal told the New York Times .

On Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang agreed with President Trump at the White House to hand over that percentage of sales in China to the federal government, an unprecedented agreement that effectively makes the U.S. government a partner of these two technology companies in their operations in the Asian giant.

The advantages for the USA

Two days after the White House signed the agreement, the Department of Commerce began issuing sales licenses for Nvidia's AI chips, the popular H20 chips. A month ago, Nvidia had obtained authorization to sell its most advanced chips in China , but since then the multinational has not received licenses to sell this advanced technology, which is crucial to the development of AI.

According to the same sources, AMD is also part of this agreement, which would mainly affect sales of its MI308 chip which, like Nvidia's chips, is vital for data centers that enable the training of large-scale artificial intelligence models.

The deal to resume exports of advanced chips to China could net the United States more than $2 billion: before the export restrictions, Nvidia sold about $15 billion worth of H2O chips to China, and AMD expected to sell about $800 million worth of its MI380 chips.

China's response

Beijing, increasingly hostile to the idea of Chinese companies using H2O, is unlikely to accept the idea of a chip tax. Yuyuantantian, a social media account affiliated with state-run China Central Television that regularly reports Beijing's views on trade, harshly criticized the chip's alleged security vulnerabilities and inefficiency on Sunday. The US and China are expected to reach an agreement today on a 90-day truce leading to a full trade deal . The green light for chip sales is one of the key issues, along with US-China purchases of agricultural products.