Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home from Monday, August 11th, 2025.

Temporarily from London, I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Nvidia and AMD are paying the U.S.

government 15% of revenue to sell AI chips to China.

Remember how with GPT5 they took away the old models? Well, the old models are back.

Some critical analysis of the whole GPT-5 moment. And you know what is finally never coming back?

AOL dial-up internet. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

Sources are telling various places that Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the U.S.

government 15% of revenues from H20 and MI308 chip sales in China to obtain the export licenses

granted to those companies last week.

Quoting the FT.

The U.S. officials said,

NVIDIA agreed to share 15% of the revenues from H20 chip sales in China, and AMD will

provide the same percentage from MI308 chip revenues.

Two people familiar with the arrangement said the Trump administration had not yet

determined how to use the money.

The Financial

Times reported on Friday that the Commerce Department started issuing H20 export licenses on Friday

two days after Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Wong met President Donald Trump. The U.S. official said

the administration had also started issuing licenses for AMD's China chip. The quid pro quo arrangement is unprecedented.

According to export control experts, no U.S. company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their

revenues to obtain export licenses. But the deal fits a pattern in the Trump administration

where the president urges companies to take measures such as domestic investments, for example,

...