The U.S. government will introduce a 15% charge on certain Nvidia and AMD chip sales to China, making it a requirement for the companies to secure export licenses, a Trump administration official has confirmed.
While export controls for sensitive products are nothing new, charging a company 15% of its revenue to sell a particular product to a particular country is unprecedented, News.Az reports, citing Axios.
The two chip companies agreed to the fee structure last week, the Financial Times first reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
It was not immediately clear how the government would deploy the presumed billions of dollars in fees collected.
The deal applies specifically to Nvidia's H20 chip and AMD's MI308, both crucial to AI applications.
"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 in response to the FT report.
AMD did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment on Sunday evening.
Chinese customers are expected to rush in to buy Nvidia H20s in the face of pent-up demand. The company last month reportedly ordered hundreds of thousands more chips from its manufacturer TSMC to keep up with all that appetite.
The company has said being blocked from selling the chip to China cost it $4.5 billion in one quarter alone.
