aljazeera.com - Nvidia AMD to pay of china chip sales to US government reports say

Nvidia, AMD to pay 15% of China chip sales to US government

Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the United States government a share of revenues from chip sales in China as part of a deal to secure export licences for their products, the White House confirmed.

Under the agreement reached with US President Donald Trump’s administration, Nvidia will share 15 percent of revenues from sales of its H20 AI chip, while AMD will pay the same percentage of MI308 chip revenues.

After targeting the chip for export restrictions, Trump said he negotiated a deal with the president and CEO of Nvidia, Jenson Huang.

“He’s selling essentially an old chip,” said Trump. “I said, if I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release. I released them only from the H20.”

The unorthodox agreement, which has no known precedent, comes after the Trump administration last month agreed to reverse a ban on the sale of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China.

The Financial Times, which first reported the news, said the Trump administration had yet to decide how it would use the collected revenues.

It reminds me of a story from the Old Testament about Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of soup.

I guess the thery is that once an AI standard is agreed upon world-wide, whatever country owns that stack will have a huge advantage (think of how the US squandered the fax machine idea to Japan and 5G telephone to China, Sweden and Finland). I'm wondering if the "next big thing" will be who owns the global stack for autonomous vehicles. Tesla and Google had significant head starts, but China is catching up fast.

Jeff