Nvidia's lobbying spending surged 600% to pay its way into rewriting US export policy, letting it sell powerful AI chips to China in exchange for the US government taking a cut.

• The US reversed its ban and now lets Nvidia sell powerful H200 AI chips to China, taking a 15-25% cut of each sale.
• Chinese firms like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent are already ordering hundreds of thousands of these chips.
• Nvidia spent $4.95 million on lobbying in 2025, up 600%, hiring ex-officials to reshape the rules from inside.
• Because the government now earns money from these sales, it has a financial reason to keep them going, making the policy hard to reverse.
• Nvidia controls 94% of the AI chip market, so almost all the China business funnels through it.

Outlook: The deal runs until December 2026 and will likely be renewed or expanded, setting a precedent for other industries to buy their way past national security rules.