
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration halted sales of H20 chips to China in April
Nvidia, AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenue to US, official says

Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the U.S. government 15% of revenue from sales to China of advanced computer chips, a U.S. official said on Sunday, in an unusual move likely to faze American companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration halted sales of H20 chips to China in April, but Nvidia announced last month Washington had said it would allow the company to resume sales and it hoped to start deliveries soon.
Another U.S. official said on Friday the Commerce Department had begun issuing licenses for the sale of H20 artificial intelligence chips to China.
Both the U.S. officials declined to be named because details have not been made public.
The new levy could also hurt margins for the two companies, analysts warned. Shares of Nvidia and AMD fell about 1% and nearly 2%, respectively, in premarket trade on Monday.
The deal to pay the U.S. government from sales in China is unusual for a president, and marks Trump's latest intervention in corporate decision-making.
Trump harangues company executives to invest in America to shore up domestic jobs and manufacturing, and last week, he demanded new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan immediately resign, calling him "highly conflicted" due to his ties to Chinese firms.
The U.S. official said the Trump administration did not feel the sale of H20 and equivalent chips was compromising national security.
"It's wild," said Geoff Gertz, a senior fellow at Center for New American Security, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C.
"Either selling H20 chips to China is a national security risk, in which case we shouldn't be doing it to begin with, or it's not a national security risk, in which case, why are we putting this extra penalty on the sale?"
When asked if Nvidia had agreed to pay 15% of revenues to the United States, an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement: "We follow rules the U.S. 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.”