US clears Nvidia, AMD to resume China sales under 15% revenue share

The Trump administration has cleared Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to resume sales of certain AI processors to China, in exchange for the U.S. government taking a 15 percent share of the revenue from those sales. The arrangement, confirmed by the White House, grants export licenses for Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 chips to Chinese customers while instituting a direct revenue transfer to the U.S. treasury. The deal represents a highly unusual use of export licensing as a revenue mechanism and signals a notable shift in how Washington is weighing national security concerns against access to a fast-growing Chinese market for leading AI hardware.

The change comes amid a broader landscape of U.S. export controls that had sharply restricted sales of advanced chips to China, part of a long-running dispute over technology, security and competition. Nvidia and AMD together account for a sizeable share of China’s AI compute needs, and even with licenses, China remains a critical, if evolving, market for high-end accelerators. Nvidia’s China revenue has historically represented a minority of its total, but the country is a focal point for demand as hyperscale cloud operators...