Nvidia shares dipped in pre-market trading on Monday following reports that the chipmaker has agreed to an unprecedented arrangement to pay the US government 15% of its China-derived revenues in exchange for export licences.
The revenue share applies to Nvidia’s H20 chips, according to the Financial Times, citing a US official, noting that the Trump administration had yet to determine how to use the money.
The chipmakers agreed to the quid pro quo arrangement as a condition for obtaining export licenses for the Chinese market that were granted last week, according to the unnamed official.
According to export control experts, no US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licenses, the newspaper said.
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Donald Trump has encouraged firms, and countries, to make investments in the US to, in his words, “buy down” the tariff rates he imposes.
AMD (AMD) has also reportedly agreed to pay 15% of its revenue to the US government, in sales of its MI308 chip.
Shares in Tesla rose in pre-market trading after chief executive Elon Musk said the company would increase its focus on autonomous driving systems, including Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot.
In a post on X, Musk confirmed the disbanding of the entire Dojo supercomputer team. The group had been tasked with developing Tesla’s in-house artificial intelligence (AI) chips to support its self-driving technologies and the Optimus humanoid robot.
He added that Tesla’s AI5 and AI6 chips would assume the role previously held by the Dojo team. “It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs,” Musk said in the post.
The company plans to use its AI5 and AI6 chips for both training and inference of its autonomous driving systems, such as FSD and Autopilot. The same chips will also be deployed in Tesla’s consumer product line, including the Optimus robot, the Cybercab, and the next-generation Roadster.
SoftBank has selected several leading investment banks to assist with a potential initial public offering in the United States for PayPay, its Japanese payments app operator, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
