Nvidia and AMD have agreed to share 15% of their revenue from sales to China with the U.S. government, the White House confirmed Monday, sparking debate about whether the move could impact the chip giants’ business and whether Washington might seek out similar deals.
In exchange for the revenue cut, the two semiconductor companies will receive export licenses to sell Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 chips in China, according to the Financial Times.
“We follow 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 said in a statement to NBC News. “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”
CNBC has reached out to AMD for comment.
The arrangement crafted by U.S. President Donald Trump‘s administration is “unusual”, analysts told CNBC, but underscores the transactional nature of the current White House leader. Meanwhile, investors see the move as broadly positive for both Nvidia and AMD, which once more secure access to the Chinese market.
What it means for Nvidia and AMD
Nvidia’s H20 is a chip that has been specifically created to meet export requirements to China. It was previously banned under export curbs but the company last month said it expected to receive licenses to send the product to China.
Also in July, AMD said it would resume exports of its MI308 chips.
At the time, there was no suggestion that the resumption of sales to China would come with conditions or any kind of revenue forfeiture, and the step was celebrated by markets because of the billions of dollars worth of potential sales to China that were back on the table.
On Monday, Nvidia shares rose modestly, while AMD’s stock was up more than 2%, highlighting how investors believe the latest development is not a major negative for the companies.
“From an investor perspective, it’s still a net positive, 85% of the revenue is better than zero,” Ben Barringer, global technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC.
“The question will be whether Nvidia and AMD adjust their prices by 15% to account for the levy, but ultimately it’s better that they can sell into the market rather than hand the market over entirely to Huawei.”
Uncertainty nevertheless still looms for both U.S. companies over the longer term.
“In the short term, the deal gives both companies some certainties for their exports to China. For the long term, we don’t know if the U.S. government may want to take a bigger cut from their China business especially if their sales to China keep growing,” George Chen, partner and co-chair of the digital practice at The Asia Group, told CNBC.
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Trump unlikely to strike similar deals
Multiple analysts told CNBC that the deal is “unusual,” but almost par for the course for Trump.
“It’s a good development, albeit a strange one, and feels like the sort of arrangement you might expect from President Trump, who is a deal-maker at heart. He’s willing to yield, but only if he gets something in return, and this certainly sets an unusual precedent,” Barringer said.
Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, said the revenue cut is equivalent to an “indirect tariff at source.”
Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, also posted Sunday on X that the move is a “sort of ‘tax’ for doing business in China.”
But such deals are unlikely to be cut for other companies.
“I don’t anticipate it extending to other sectors that are just as important to the U.S. economylike software and services,” Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at The Futurum Group, told CNBC.
The U.S. sees semiconductors as a strategic technology, given they underpin so many other tools like artificial intelligence, consumer electronics and even military applications. The U.S. has therefore put chips under an export control regime unlike that of any other product.
“Semiconductor is a very unique business and the pay-to-play tactic may work for Nvidia and AMD because it’s very much about getting export approval from the U.S. gov,” The Asia Group’s Chen said.
“Other business like Apple and Meta can be more complicated when it comes to their business models and services for China.”
How China could react
Semiconductors have become a highly sensitive geopolitical topic. Over the last two weeks, China has raised concerns about the security of Nvidia’s chips.
Late last month, Chinese regulators asked Nvidia to “clarify” reports about potential security vulnerabilities and “backdoors.” Nvidia rejected the possibility that its chips have any “backdoors” that would allow anyone to access or control them. On Sunday, Nvidia again denied that its H20 semiconductors have backdoors after accusations from a social media account affiliated with Chinese state media.
China’s state-run newspaper Global Times slammed Washington’s tactics, citing an expert.
“This approach means that the US government has repudiated its original security justification to pressure US chip makers to secure export licenses to China through economic leverage,” the Global Times article said.
The Chinese government is yet to comment on the reported revenue agreement.
Trump’s deal with Nvidia and AMD will likely stir mixed feelings in China. On the one hand, China will be unhappy with the arrangement. On the other hand, Chinese firms will likely want to get their hands on these chips in order to continue to advance their own AI capabilities.
“For China, it is a conundrum as they need those chips to advance their AI ambitions but also the fee to the US government could make it costlier and there is a doubt of US “backdoors” considering US has agreed for chipmakers to supply,” Counterpoint Research’s Shah said.
Business representatives staff a table at a career fair in Harlem hosted by Assemblymember Jordan Wright on Dec. 10, 2025, in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
The U.S. November jobs report has something for everybody.
Those convinced of weakness will highlight the higher-than-expected unemployment rate as well as the number of jobs shrinking in October.
On the other hand, proponents of a strong economy will focus on jobs growth in November beating estimates, and point out that the increase in the unemployment rate was mostly because the labor force grew, as CNBC’s Jeff Cox noted.
Without any definitive judgment that can be made on the state of the labor market, traders left their bets on interest rate cuts in January mostly unchanged. It’s currently at 25.5%, around one percentage point higher than before the release of the November jobs report, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
“Today’s data paints a picture of an economy catching its breath,” said Gina Bolvin, president at Bolvin Wealth Management Group. “Job growth is holding on, but cracks are forming. Consumers are still standing, but not sprinting.”
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.
The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. The Information first reported on the potential deal.
The discussions come after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and formally outlined the details of its partnership with Microsoft, giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with companies across the broader AI ecosystem.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, but it no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider, according to an October release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.
Amazon has invested at least $8 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the booming generative AI market. Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in the startup.
Amazon Web Services has been designing its own AI chips since around 2015, and the hardware has become crucial for AI companies that are trying to train models and meet growing demand for compute. AWS announced its Inferentia chips in 2018, and the latest generation of its Trainium chips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Last month, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS, its first contract with the leader in cloud infrastructure leader.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
Shares of Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared about 700% in their market debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, after the company raised nearly $600 million in its initial public offering.
Shares, which were priced at 104.66 yuan in the IPO, surged to over 835 yuan on debut, marking a 697% jump.
Similar to Moore Threads, which saw a robust debut at the start of the month, MetaX develops graphics processing units for artificial intelligence applications, tapping into a fast-growing sector driven by rising adoption of AI services.
MetaX is part of a growing cohort of local chipmakers building AI processors, reflecting Beijing’s push to reduce dependence on U.S. chips following Washington’s tech curbs on export of high-end technology to China.
Washington has imposed export curbs on U.S. chip behemoth Nvidia, barring sales of its most advanced AI chips to China.
Newer Chinese players such as Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the AI space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in graphics processing unit, or GPU, demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.
Earlier this month, shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based GPU manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.
Macquarie’s equity analyst Eugene Hsiao said investor enthusiasm around Chinese AI-chip IPOs such as MetaX is partly shaped by longer-term expectations that China will build a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem as tensions with the U.S. persist.
“For that to work, you need these players. You need names like Moore Threads, Meta X, etc,” he said.
“So I think when investors are looking at these IPOs, they implicitly are thinking about the nationalistic element,” Hsiao noted, adding that the main driver of the frenzy, however, was the firms’ growth potential.