US To Receive 15% Cut of AMD and Nvidia AI Chip Sales to China

President Trump approved exports of some artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China via a nonconventional revenue-share deal between the US government and Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

The Details: Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of revenue generated from chip sales to China, effectively making the federal government a partner in their Chinese operations. Critics have warned that the arrangement could enable China to gain greater access to advanced US computing power, even as the two nations compete for technological dominance. Rached last week, the deal could bring in over $2 billion for the US government.

For Context: Trump said that America’s most advanced chips are still off-limits to China, calling Nvidia’s latest Blackwell processor “super, super advanced” technology that no one else has, and won’t for at least five years. He also repeatedly characterized Nvidia’s H20 chips, which are sold to China, as essentially obsolete.

How The Media Covered It: News outlets across the political spectrum acknowledged the national security concerns raised over providing China with AI chips, and the rarity of a financial agreement between companies and the government. The New York Times (Lean Left bias) highlighted the whiplash from the Trump administration, which had banned AI chip sales to China in April, and described Nvidia’s chips as “ideal for running some of the calculations that power AI” with performance surpassing that of Chinese rival Huawei. Reuters (Center) quoted former director of Technology and National Security at the White House National Security Council Saif Khan saying that “even with scaled-down versions of flagship Nvidia (chips), China could spend and buy enough of them to build world-leading, frontier-scale AI supercomputers.” The New York Post (Lean Right) highlighted Trump’s defense of the decision, writing that he “painted himself as a tough negotiator who extracted payment for access to the Chinese market while protecting America’s technological edge.” 

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