The arrangement, confirmed by a US official and others familiar with the matter, will see Nvidia hand over a cut from H20 chip sales, while AMD will do the same from MI308 sales. The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street are guessing what Washington will do with the cash, but it will probably be something meaningful and tasteful like providing gold plated toilets to the White House or a nice couple of golfing trips to Scotland.
The commerce department began issuing H20 licences on 9 August, two days after Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang met Donald Trump. AMD’s China-bound silicon was waved through at the same time. Export control experts say no US company has previously agreed to share revenue to get a licence.
AMD stayed schtum, but Nvidia did not deny the deal, saying: “We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.”
Bernstein analysts estimate Nvidia could flog about 1.5 million H20s to China in 2025, bringing in $23 billion before the Trump cut.
The H20 has been a political football since Joe Biden’s administration slapped export bans on higher-end AI chips. Nvidia then built the H20 as a neutered version for China. In April, the Trump administration said it would ban it entirely, before reversing in June after Huang’s White House chat.
The Bureau of Industry and Security dragged its heels on licences, prompting Huang to raise it directly with Trump last Wednesday. Licences started appearing on Friday.
Jamestown Foundation China expert and former National Security Council staffer Liza Tobin, said: “Beijing must be gloating to see Washington turn export licences into revenue streams. What’s next letting Lockheed Martin sell F-35s to China for a 15 per cent commission?”
Some BIS officials are privately unhappy. In a letter to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, former Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and 19 others warned the H20 was “a potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities” and would inevitably land in the Chinese military. Nvidia called that “misguided” and rejected claims the chip could be weaponised.
On Saturday, Nvidia said: “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide. America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”
The row comes as Washington and Beijing hold trade talks ahead of a hoped-for Trump–Xi summit. The commerce department has reportedly been told to freeze new export controls to avoid upsetting Beijing, which is now pushing to ease restrictions on high-bandwidth memory chips crucial for advanced AI manufacturing.