Nvidia and AMD agreed to deliver to the government of USA 15% of the income they generate for the sale of chips in China, as part of an unusual arrangement with the administration of Donald Trump to obtain export licenses.
According to sources close to the agreement, including an American official, the measure was a condition for the Department of Commerce to grant, last week, the necessary permits so that both companies can export their semiconductors to the Chinese market.
In the case of Nvidia, the percentage will apply to the sales of its H20 chip, while for AMD it will correspond to the income of its MI308 model. The Trump administration has not yet defined the fate of the resources obtained.
The mechanism is unpublished in American commercial policy, according to export control experts, since there are no precedents that a company gives part of its income to obtain licenses. The strategy is aligned, however, with Trump practices to condition regulatory measures to corporate changes that benefit the national economy.
The agreement arises after months of uncertainty. The H20 was designed by NVIDIA to comply with the restrictions imposed by President Joe Biden on advanced chips for artificial intelligence. In April, the Trump administration announced that it would prohibit its export to China, but the president reversed the decision in June after meeting with Jensen Huang, executive director of Nvidia.
Critics of the measure warn that H20 could strengthen China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, including its military use. Some officials of the Office of Industry and Security have also expressed reservations on export authorization.
Nvidia rejects these accusations and argues that the chip cannot be used for military purposes. The company said that the export rules hope will allow the United States to compete in the Chinese and global market, and that the country does not repeat the 5G case, when it lost leadership in telecommunications.
The debate on chips export controls occurs while Washington and Beijing develop commercial conversations that could pave the way for a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The demands of Beijing is the flexibility of restrictions on the memory chips of great bandwidth, key to the development of advanced artificial intelligence.
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