Top chipmakers Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the U.S. government 15% of revenue from sales of their advanced computer chips to China, a U.S. official said on Sunday, in an unusual move likely to stir confusion among American companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration halted sales of H20 chips to China in April, but Nvidia announced last month that Washington had said it would allow the company to resume sales and it hoped to start deliveries soon.
Another U.S. official said on Friday the Commerce Department had begun issuing licenses for the sale of H20 artificial intelligence chips to China.
Both the U.S. officials declined to be named because details have not been made public.
The new levy could also hurt margins for the two companies, analysts warned. Shares of Nvidia and AMD fell about 1% and nearly 2%, respectively, in premarket trade on Monday.
The deal to pay the U.S. government from sales in China is unusual for a president and marks Trump's latest intervention in corporate decision-making.
Trump harangues company executives to invest in America to shore up domestic jobs and manufacturing. Last week, he demanded that new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan immediately resign, calling him "highly conflicted" due to his ties to Chinese firms.
The U.S. official said the Trump administration did not believe the sale of H20 and equivalent chips compromised national security.
"It's wild," said Geoff Gertz, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C.
"Either selling H20 chips to China is a national security risk, in which case we shouldn't be doing it to begin with, or it's not a national security risk, in which case, why are we putting this extra penalty on the sale?"
When asked if Nvidia had agreed to pay 15% of revenues to the U.S., an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement: "We follow the rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets."
"While we haven't shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide."
Nvidia has warned that being unable to supply H20 chips to China could slice $8 billion off sales from its July quarter, while AMD had forecast a $1.5 billion hit to revenue this year owing to the curbs.
AMD did not respond to a request for comment on the news that was first reported by the Financial Times (FT) earlier on Sunday.
"The Chinese market is significant for both these companies, so even if they have to give up a bit of the money, they would otherwise make it look like a logical move on paper," AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said. "That said, it is unprecedented and there is always the risk that the revenue take could be upped or that the Trump administration changes its mind and re-imposes export controls."
The U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China's foreign ministry, approached for comment on Monday, said the country had repeatedly expressed its position on the issue of U.S. chip exports. The ministry in the past has accused the U.S. of using technology and trade issues to "maliciously contain and suppress China."
The FT reported that the chipmakers agreed to the arrangement as a condition for obtaining export licenses for their semiconductors, including AMD's MI308 chips. The report stated that the Trump administration had yet to determine how to utilize the funds.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last month the planned resumption of sales of the AI chips was part of U.S. negotiations with China to get rare earths and described the H20 as Nvidia's "fourth-best chip" in an interview with CNBC.
Lutnick said it was in the U.S. interests to have Chinese companies using American technology, even if the most advanced was prohibited from export, so they continued to use an American "tech stack."
The U.S. official who spoke about the 15% levy stated that they did not know when the agreement would be implemented, nor exactly how, but assured that the administration would be in compliance with the law.
Alasdair Phillips-Robins, who served as an adviser at the Commerce Department during the administration of former President Joe Biden, criticized the move.
"If this reporting is accurate, it suggests the administration is trading away national security protections for revenue for the Treasury," Phillips-Robins said.
Nvidia generated $17 billion in revenue from China in the fiscal year ending Jan. 26, representing 13% of total sales. AMD reported $6.2 billion in revenue from China for 2024, accounting for 24% of its total revenue.
Giving away some revenue from these chips to the U.S. government would reduce the gross margins for these processors by 5 to 15 percentage points, resulting in an impact of "a point or so" on their overall gross margins, Bernstein analysts said in a note.
