American chip makers Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of the revenue from their semiconductor sales in China. The arrangement forms part of a deal to secure export licences to the world’s second-largest economy.
“We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” Nvidia stated.
Nvidia added: “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”
Under the agreement, Nvidia will pay 15 percent of its revenues from H20 chip sales in China to the US government, while AMD will hand over the same percentage from its MI308 chip revenues, the Financial Times first reported.
Washington had previously banned the sale of Nvidia’s H20 chips to Beijing over security concerns, although the firm recently announced that the prohibition would be lifted.
The H20 chip was developed specifically for the Chinese market after US export restrictions were imposed by the Biden administration in 2023. Its sale was effectively banned by the Trump administration in April this year.
Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, has spent months lobbying both sides for a resumption of Chinese sales. He reportedly met US President Donald Trump last week.
The move to resume chip sales comes as trade tensions between Beijing and Washington ease. Beijing has relaxed controls on rare earth exports, while the US has lifted restrictions on chip design software firms operating in China.
In May, the world’s two largest economies agreed to a 90-day truce in their tariffs war. Since then, senior trade officials from both sides have met several times, although no agreement to extend the pause has been confirmed ahead of a 12 August deadline.
As part of his tariffs policy, Trump has pressed major companies to increase investment in the US. Last week, Apple announced an additional $100 billion investment in the country, adding to a previous pledge to spend $500 billion in the US over the next four years.
In June, memory chip maker Micron Technology said its planned US investments would total $200 bn, including a new manufacturing plant in Idaho.
Nvidia itself has announced plans to build AI servers in the US worth up to $500bn, pledging to develop the first entirely American-made AI supercomputers.
