Nvidia and AMD have agreed to yield to the United States a part of the income from the sale of certain AI chips in China. This pact unlocks the export of these components to the Asian country after months of uncertainty, but does so with that unusual consideration.
The context. The US government It has been for years imposing all kinds of prohibitions to Chips exports and advanced technology from AI to China. The goal has always been avoid that the Asian giant could compete. The shot has come absolutely for the cylinder headand the advance of Chinese AI models –As Deepseek– And chips –Like Huawei– They show that this tactic has not worked.
Nvidia and its H20 chips. To try to avoid those vetoes, Nvidia He developed his H20 chip with the intention of meeting the requirements of the US government – not selling its most advanced chips – and thus continuing to obtain income in China. They didn’t even solve the problem, and the US government prohibited the sale of that chip in the Asian country.
A dilemma that also involved AMD. US has faced for months A apparently impossible dilemma: to sell Hardware from AI to China, or that of not selling it to him and that they develop them. AMD was also in identical situationabsolutely blocked to be able to sell their chips from AI to China, which meant a colossal problem for their global income, which are nourished with force of sales in China.
Solution: Give me my slice. What has unlocked all this scenario has been, of course, money. In an unprecedented agreement revealed In Financial Timesthe US government will allow NVIDIA and AMD MI308 to export to China, but 15% of the revenues of these sales will go to the United States government coffers.
Jensen Huang had already notified. The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huan, already warned that the blocking of the sale of its chips in China could cause A reduction of 15,000 million dollars In your income this year. The Asian giant represents 13% of the total income of Nvidia, but The sanctions They threatened the survival of this company (and AMD) in that country.
A successful meeting. According to FT, the US Department of Commerce began to issue export licenses for the H20 Chips on Friday, two days after the NVIDIA CEO met with the US President Donald Trump. That meeting seems to have been the definitive After the theoretical initial agreement that both had reached less than a month ago.
This had never happened. This “Quid Pro quo” is not preceded, FT analysts stand out, who point out that no US company had previously agreed to pay part of their income to obtain export licenses for their products. Even so, the pact follows the dictatorial position of President Trump, which In addition to its badly called reciprocal tariffs Does not to demand that companies manufacture the chips used in products that are sold there in the US, such as iPhone.
The forecasts. According to analysts of the consultant Bersntein, Nvidia would have sold about 1.5 million H20 chips in China without exports controls. That would have meant revenues of about 23,000 million dollars, but now that figure is probably lower. Even so, it is expected that Chinese companies make great orders of both the Nvidia and AMD chips.
A worrying precedent. Meanwhile, certain experts criticize this type of agreement. Liza Tobin, of the Jamestown Foundation, commented on how “Beijing must be gloating to see how Washington converts export licenses into sources of income. What will be the next one? Let Lockheed Martin sell F-35 to China in exchange for a 15 %commission?”.
Image | Nvidia | Dominic Kurniawan
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