Trade experts express concern about reported transactions that link export controls to monetary payments.
NVIDIA and AMD have agreed to grant the US government revenue from China’s chip sales as part of their transactions to secure export licenses for their products, US media reports.
Under an agreement with US President Donald Trump’s administration, NVIDIA shared 15% of revenue from sales of its H20 AI chips, and AMD reported on Sunday that it would pay the same percentage of MI308 chip revenue.
The unprecedented unknown unanimous agreement comes after the Trump administration agreed to reverse Nvidia’s ban on selling H20 chips to China last month.
The Financial Times, which first reported the news, said it has yet to decide how the Trump administration will use the revenues it has collected.
AMD did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia did not confirm or deny the transaction, but said it was following the rules of the US government for doing business in overseas markets.
“We haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, but we hope that export control rules will compete with the US all over the world,” a company spokesperson said.
“The US cannot lose its telecommunications leadership over repeated 5G. The American AI technology stack becomes the global standard when we race.”
Following reports of transactions confirmed by The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC, trade experts have expressed concern about the implications of linking control over sensitive technology to monetary payments.
Christopher Padilla, former director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Office, called the agreement “surprising.”
“If the Trump administration is making it possible to purchase past export controls imposed to protect US national security, we are in extremely dangerous waters,” Padilla said in a LinkedIn post.
“The mixture of bribery and scary mail is certainly unprecedented and perhaps illegal.”
Peter Harrell, a non-resident of Carnegie Donations for International Peace, said the deal set a worrying precedent.
“Chinese pays a lot of money for F35s and advanced US military technology,” Harrell said in a post on X.
“Whether Nvidia thinks it’s possible to sell H20 in China or not, charging fees in exchange for relaxing national security export controls is a frightening precedent.”
