AMD China and Export Control Risk: How Chip Rules Affect AMD

The fastest AI chips now need a government's permission to cross some borders. So a chipmaker's sales to a country can depend on an export license, a tariff and the buyer's own government, as much as on what customers want to buy.

News about chips and China tends to arrive as a single word: a ban, a cut for Washington, a new tariff. The report seldom says which chips, how much revenue, which government acted, or whether the rule is proposed, in force or on hold.

For any chip stock, China exposure comes in three layers. The first is revenue from customers billed in China, and the second is the short list of products that Washington controls. The third is what Beijing lets its own companies buy. The layers differ a great deal in size, and one headline often touches just one of them.

AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, shows all three layers at once. It bills billions of dollars a year to customers in China, it has an AI chip that was stopped and later licensed, and it owns stakes in ventures with Chinese companies. On BloFin, AMD's share price is tracked by the AMDUSDT Perpetual, a futures contract that offers leverage of up to 20x, so a China headline reaches a position there only through its effect on that price.

What is AMD's China and export-control risk?

AMD's China and export-control risk is the chance that chip rules in Washington or Beijing cut AMD's sales. Customers billed in China and Hong Kong paid AMD $7.8 billion in 2025 (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). Licensed MI308 AI chips brought in about $390 million from China in the fourth quarter of 2025 (source: AMD Q4 2025 earnings call).

An export control is a government rule on what may be shipped where, and to whom. An export license is the permission a company needs to ship a controlled product anyway. Under the US rules on chips for China, certain AMD Instinct data-center GPUs, the chips AMD sells for AI work, cannot be shipped there without a license (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

Each layer of AMD's exposure has its own latest figure or status:

The two dollar figures measure different things. The $7.8 billion counts every AMD product sold to customers billed in China, and AMD's 10-K, its annual report, gives it as one line with no split by product. The $390 million counts one licensed AI chip in one quarter. A rule on AI chips therefore hits the smaller layer directly, and how far it reaches into the larger one depends on which products it names.

The third layer sits with Beijing, which can decide what its own companies may import even after Washington has said yes. That makes the risk run in both directions, and each direction has its own dates and documents.

The bigger figure is the easier one to misread, so it helps to know exactly what it counts.

How much of AMD's revenue comes from China?

Customers billed in China and Hong Kong paid AMD $7.8 billion in 2025, or 22.4% of its revenue, up from $6.2 billion in 2024 and $3.4 billion in 2023. AMD sorts this line by the billing location of each customer, meaning the address on the invoice (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

AMD's 10-K gives three years of the China line, and each year's share follows from AMD's total revenue for that year, worked from the unrounded figures:

The billing address tells you where the invoice goes. Say you run a company billed in Hong Kong that buys AMD chips for servers in another country. Your purchases land in AMD's China line wherever those servers are installed. In the same way, a buyer billed in Singapore counts in Singapore, even if the chips later travel somewhere else.

China was AMD's second-largest billing region in 2025. The US came first at $11.4 billion, while Taiwan was billed $5.2 billion and Singapore $4.3 billion (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). The filing gives only these invoice totals, so the Taiwan and Singapore lines tell you where customers are billed and nothing about where the chips are used.

Over three years, the China share jumped from 15.1% in 2023 to 24.2% in 2024, then slipped to 22.4% in 2025, even though the dollar amount grew by about $1.5 billion. The share fell because AMD's total revenue grew faster than its China line, rising from $25.8 billion to $34.6 billion.

Check the billing basis before you set AMD's China share against Intel's or any other chipmaker's. A share only means something once you know how it was counted.

The smaller layer, the chips Washington actually controls, has a dated history of its own.

AMD's MI308 chips and the 2025 export license

In April 2025 the US began requiring a license to ship AMD's MI308 AI chips to China, and AMD took about $800 million of inventory and related charges that quarter. Licenses followed, and when shipments began in the fourth quarter AMD reversed about $360 million, for a net charge near $440 million in 2025 (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

The MI308 is one of AMD's Instinct data-center GPUs. An inventory charge is a write-down: the company cuts the value of chips it may be unable to sell, and the cut counts as a cost. A reserve release reverses part of that write-down when the chips turn out to be sellable after all.

AMD first put a number on the rule in an 8-K, the filing a US public company uses to report a major event. It said AMD had finished its first review of the new rule on April 15, 2025. It expected charges of up to approximately $800 million for inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves (source: AMD 8-K, April 2025).

Jean Hu, AMD's finance chief, explained the reversal on the February 3, 2026 call. She said the $360 million went with the fourth-quarter China sales and also covered the $100 million AMD expected to ship there in the first quarter of 2026 (source: AMD Q4 2025 earnings call).

On that call, AMD's chief executive, Lisa Su, said those licensed orders dated from very early in 2025. Because the situation was very dynamic, she added, AMD was forecasting no further China revenue beyond that first-quarter amount (source: AMD Q4 2025 earnings call). By May 5, 2026, Hu described China revenue in the first quarter as "not material" (source: AMD Q1 2026 earnings call).

AMD's filings and earnings calls give the whole MI308 story in dated steps:

The charge still shapes comparisons a year later. AMD's gross margin, the part of revenue it keeps after paying to make its products, was 54% in the quarter to June 27, 2026, against 40% a year earlier. AMD put the gap down mainly to the absence of the MI308 charges and a better product mix (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

The MI308 was the first test of how a license rule turns into a number. In January 2026 the rules changed shape.

The 15% revenue-share expectation

In August 2025, US government officials "expressed an expectation" that the US government would receive 15% of the revenue from licensed MI308 sales to China. AMD's annual report adds that the government had not published a regulation setting up that requirement (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). The same wording still stood in AMD's report for the quarter to June 27, 2026 (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

A revenue share is a slice of sales handed over, whatever those sales cost to make. Say licensed MI308 sales to China came to $200 million in a quarter. A 15% share of that would be $30 million, leaving $170 million before the cost of the chips themselves.

AMD sets out the risk in its own filing. Any government request for a percentage of revenue could draw AMD into litigation, raise its costs and weaken its position. It could also help rivals that face no such arrangement (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

When a headline mentions a cut of AMD's China sales for Washington, the first check is whether a regulation has been published. The status line in AMD's most recent 10-Q, its quarterly report, is the place to look, and the June 2026 report still carried the expectation with no regulation behind it.

US export rules on AMD's AI chips in 2026

Since January 15, 2026, the US has reviewed license requests to ship chips such as AMD's MI325X to China case by case, where the default had been denial. Exporters must meet conditions that include testing in the US and a cap tied to US shipments (source: Federal Register, January 15, 2026).

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is the part of the US Commerce Department that writes export rules. Before this rule, a license to ship chips like the MI325X to China or Macau faced a presumption of denial. That means BIS turned it down by default. Case-by-case review means each request is judged on its own facts, and the rule covers Nvidia's H200 and chips like it too (source: Federal Register, January 15, 2026).

BIS announced the change on January 14, 2026, and its release named Nvidia's H200 and AMD's MI325X. The release said the rule followed President Trump's announcement of December 8, 2025 that the H200 and similar chips could be shipped to approved customers in China (source: BIS).

The rule sets conditions for selling MI325X-class chips to China or Macau, including these (source: Federal Register, January 15, 2026). The seller must be able to show that:

• The chip was on sale in the US when the rule was published, and there is enough supply of it in the US.

• Making chips for China will not take foundry capacity away from US customers of similar or more advanced chips.

• The recipient has shown sufficient security procedures.

• The chip passes independent, third-party testing in the US to check its performance.

• The total computing power shipped to China is no more than 50% of what went to US customers of the same chips (source: Federal Register, January 15, 2026).

• The chips are not for a military end use or a military end user.

The condition on computing power works as a cap. TPP, short for total processing performance, is the rule's measure of a chip's computing power, and it is how the US measures chip performance under these controls. Say AMD had shipped MI325X chips with a combined 1,000 units of TPP to US customers for use in the US. Its licensed MI325X exports to China could then total no more than 500 units of TPP, and the room grows only as US shipments of the same chips grow.

In February 2026, the US granted AMD some export licenses to ship its Instinct MI325 products to certain China-based customers (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026). A license is permission to ship, though, and two more steps stand between the chip and a buyer in China.

Why China-bound MI325 chips face a 25% US tariff

AMD's MI325 licenses require every chip bound for China to pass an inspection in the US first. The chips are therefore imported into the US for the check. AMD says any MI325 shipped under the licenses "will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States for the inspection" (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

A tariff is a tax on imported goods. AMD's filing does not name the measure behind this one. The US tariff on certain advanced computing chips is also 25%, set by Proclamation 11002, which the President signed on January 14, 2026. It is an ad valorem duty, meaning a tax charged as a share of the goods' value, on chips entered from January 15, 2026 (source: Proclamation 11002).

The proclamation aims the duty at imports that do not help build the US technology supply chain. It exempts chips for US data centers and several other US uses (source: Proclamation 11002).

Say a licensed batch of MI325 chips is valued at $10 million when it enters the US for testing. A 25% duty on that value comes to $2.5 million, charged before the chips have left for China. The cost lands on the testing route itself, whatever the chips later sell for.

The 25% is a tariff on an import into the US. The 15% was a share of MI308 sales that officials said they expected. AMD's report for the quarter to June 27, 2026 carries both as separate items, and neither one replaced the other.

Each China-bound MI325 therefore carries a US inspection, a US duty and a place under the 50% cap. After all of that, it still needs a buyer that China will let import it.

Earlier and pending US chip rules, by status

The US rules touching AMD's China sales stand like this:

The AI Diffusion Rule of January 2025 would have added new limits on exports of advanced chips. In May 2025, BIS said it meant to rescind the rule and issue replacement rules later (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

The Entity List is a BIS list of foreign companies that face extra US export limits. A September 2025 rule put any company at least 50% owned by listed companies under the same limits. In October 2025 the US said it planned to suspend enforcement for a year, and AMD notes the limits can be reimposed at any time (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). A BIS final rule put the suspension in effect from November 10, 2025 until November 9, 2026, unless extended (source: Federal Register, November 2025).

Roll Call reported that Senator Tom Cotton's bill would require location tracking on advanced chips. Senator Jim Banks's bill would put a ban on sales of the most powerful AI chips to foreign adversaries into law for 18 months (source: Roll Call).

The September 2026 Trump-Xi summit and US chip rules

Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington began on September 23, 2026 with a deal to extend the US-China trade truce, under which the two countries agreed to scale back tariffs and hold off on new trade restrictions (source: Associated Press). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the truce, which had been due to expire on November 10, 2026, would now run through January 10, 2027 (source: Reuters).

Chip exports stayed outside the deal. The White House fact sheet on the visit, issued on September 25, 2026, lists no change to US chip export rules (source: White House). US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC that the US side had taken "off the table" all the export controls "that are national security issues" in that week's trade talks, the South China Morning Post reported (source: SCMP, via The Korea Times).

Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive, sat at the head table of the state dinner on September 24 with the two presidents, as did Nvidia's Jensen Huang (source: SCMP, via The Korea Times). The day before, she told Fox Business that the summit was "very impactful, very important" and that "we're anxiously looking at what will come out of it" (source: Fox Business).

The suspension of the Entity List rule for companies at least 50% owned by listed ones runs to November 9, 2026 unless extended, and the truce to January 10, 2027, so both are dates when a decision in Washington or Beijing could move AMD's price. The AMDUSDT Perpetual page shows the contract's live price as those dates approach.

China's own rules on buying AMD chips

China decides separately whether its companies may buy a chip the US has licensed. In its 10-Q for the three months to June 27, 2026, AMD said it did not yet know whether any MI325 imports would be allowed into China. It also says MI308 sales there depend partly on China's import control rules (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

A China-bound MI325 chip has to clear these steps, in this order:

Washington controls the license and the US inspection, while the import approval belongs to Beijing. Say you read that Washington has cleared AMD chips for China. Before you treat that as new sales, check whether Beijing has let the buyers bring the chips in.

Nvidia's H200, which falls under the same January 2026 rule, shows how that third step can work. Tom's Hardware reported on August 19, 2026 that each H200 purchase needs case-by-case approval from China's National Development and Reform Commission, a government agency. Citing the Financial Times, it said ByteDance and Tencent had each taken delivery of roughly 10,000 H200s in recent weeks (source: Tom's Hardware, August 2026).

Beijing also has other tools. AMD's 10-K says US-China trade relations remain uncertain as the US adds more Chinese companies to the Entity List and brings in new rules on chips and AI, "while China has imposed retaliatory tariffs" (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). A retaliatory tariff is an import tax a country sets in response to another country's measures. Reuters reported during Xi's visit that the two countries were at odds on issues including export controls on rare-earth minerals and computer chips (source: Reuters).

The slower risk is substitution, where Chinese buyers switch to chips designed at home. AMD's own 10-K says US export limits make it easier for its China-based competitors to develop and sell their own products and reduce the need for AMD's. It adds that limits on sales in China could weaken AMD's position against domestic Chinese rivals (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

China also has a lever that reaches into past deals, through the conditions it set on a merger.

The Xilinx conditions and China's antitrust regulator

China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) reviews mergers through its anti-monopoly bureau. On January 27, 2022, AMD and Xilinx received clearance from that bureau for their merger (source: Xilinx 8-K, January 2022).

A merger condition is a promise a company must keep for a deal to be approved. Tom's Hardware, working from a machine translation of SAMR's notice, reported five conditions on the Xilinx deal. AMD may not tie sales of its processors to Xilinx chips, and it must keep selling in China on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (source: Tom's Hardware, 2022). Supplies must keep flowing as before the deal, Xilinx chips must keep supporting Arm processors, and information about other companies' CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs, a kind of programmable chip, must be kept safe (source: Tom's Hardware, 2022).

Nvidia's own filing shows how such terms can meet US export rules. Nvidia says China's antitrust regulators published a preliminary finding on September 15, 2025. It found that Nvidia's compliance with US export controls, which required degraded products for China, "discriminated unfairly against customers in the China market". The finding added that this broke the terms of China's approval of Nvidia's Mellanox deal (source: Nvidia 10-Q, October 2025).

AMD's reported Xilinx conditions include fair, non-discriminatory sales in China. AMD also sells AI chips to China only as far as US licenses allow, as its MI308 and MI325 history shows. Those are the same two facts that met in Nvidia's case, where a Chinese regulator's preliminary finding treated compliance with a US rule as unfair treatment of Chinese customers.

For a reader of China headlines, SAMR is a name to watch beside the trade officials in Washington and Beijing.

AMD's joint ventures with Chinese companies

AMD has two sets of joint ventures with Chinese companies. It holds equity in two ventures with Higon Information Technology, known as THATIC, and the US put THATIC and the ventures on its Entity List in June 2019. AMD also owns 15% of two chip assembly and test ventures with affiliates of Tongfu Microelectronics (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

A joint venture is a business that two or more companies own together. ATMP stands for assembly, test, mark and packaging, the last factory steps before a chip ships. The two sets of ventures touch AMD in different ways:

AMD says it is complying with US law on the THATIC designation, and it warns that it may not see the expected benefits from the ventures, royalties included (source: AMD 10-K, 2025).

The Tongfu ventures matter for supply. AMD says the majority of its ATMP services come from them, and that there is no guarantee they can meet its long-term needs (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026). AMD's 10-K also names two other ATMP suppliers, SPIL and KYEC. That dependence is part of AMD's supply chain, so trade friction with China touches AMD's supply as well as its sales.

Say you are weighing a headline about new US limits on Chinese chip firms. Ask whether it names a partner in these ventures, because a supplier handling most of AMD's ATMP work is a different kind of exposure from a customer.

China headlines and the AMDUSDT Perpetual

China news reaches an AMDUSDT position through AMD's share price, and it can land at any hour. BloFin lists the contract for trading 24/7 (source: BloFin listing notice). Outside regular weekday trading hours, and on weekends and market holidays, BloFin may allow only reduce-only orders on its stock futures (source: BloFin notice).

The AMDUSDT Perpetual is a perpetual contract, which means it has no expiry date. It is settled in USDT, and BloFin listed it on May 6, 2026 (source: BloFin listing notice). Like BloFin's other stock futures, it tracks AMD's share price without making you an AMD shareholder (source: BloFin notice).

Export news keeps its own hours. AMD's 8-K on the MI308 rule was accepted by the SEC at 9.03AM ET on April 16, 2025 (source: SEC filing record). That was 1.03PM UTC. Regular hours for BloFin's stock futures start at 1.30PM UTC in daylight saving time. A filing at that hour would therefore land before the regular session, the kind of timing behind overnight and weekend gaps.

Reduce-only means BloFin accepts only orders that make a position smaller or close it. Say you have an AMDUSDT long open at 10x when a new chip rule is published before the US open. If BloFin applies the reduce-only limit at that hour, you could cut or close the position but could not add to it until regular trading resumed.

Leverage shortens the distance to liquidation. At 10x, a move of about 10% against you would use up the margin you posted. BloFin's rules trigger a reduction or liquidation before that point, once your margin falls to the maintenance margin, the minimum needed to keep it open, plus closing fees (source: BloFin liquidation rules). If you trade AMD with leverage around China news, size the position for a gap.

A short checklist helps when a China chip headline breaks:

• Which government acted: Washington, Beijing, or both?

• Is the rule proposed, final, in force, suspended or set to be rescinded?

• Which AMD product does it name: the MI308, the MI325X, or AMD's whole China line?

• Does it change the license, the tariff, or China's import approval?

• When did it land: during regular weekday trading hours, or outside them, when BloFin may restrict AMDUSDT to reduce-only orders?

China rules are one of several forces behind what moves AMD stock, and a tighter regime feeds the bear case for the stock.

If you expect a China headline to hurt AMD, you can also short AMD on BloFin with the same contract, under the same hours and the same liquidation rules.

Looking to trade the AMDUSDT Perpetual around China headlines? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the AMDUSDT Perpetual trading page.

Frequently asked questions

Do US chip export controls cover AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors?

AMD describes the October 2023 US rule as stopping certain AMD Instinct chips and certain AMD Versal FPGAs, a kind of programmable chip, from going to China without a license. The same limit covers customers outside the US whose headquarters or ultimate parent is in China or another country in the group the rules call D5 (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). Ryzen and EPYC processors are absent from the products AMD names in that passage of its 10-K.

Is AMD a Chinese company?

AMD is incorporated in Delaware and has its headquarters at 2485 Augustine Drive in Santa Clara, California (source: AMD 10-K, 2025). Its annual report also lists the places where it has significant operations. In the US, they are Austin, Texas; San Jose, California; and Longmont, Colorado. Abroad, they are Shanghai, China; Markham, Canada; Dublin, Ireland; Singapore; and Bengaluru and Hyderabad, India. So China hosts one of AMD's main sites, while the company itself is American. Its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker AMD.

Does the 25% chip tariff apply to AMD chips used in the US?

Proclamation 11002 sets the 25% duty on certain advanced chips, and it lists uses in the US that are exempt. The duty does not apply to chips for US data centers or for repairs or replacements done in the US. Chips for US research and development, US startups and US public-sector use are exempt too. So are consumer and civilian industrial uses in the US outside data centers. The Secretary can also exempt other uses that help the US tech supply chain (source: Proclamation 11002).

Has AMD's Lisa Su met Chinese government officials?

Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive, met Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng on May 18, 2026. He Lifeng reiterated that Beijing welcomed continued foreign investment, according to Xinhua as reported by the South China Morning Post (source: SCMP). On the US side, Su said on AMD's February 3, 2026 call that the MI308 license was approved "through work with the administration", and that AMD had by then applied for MI325 licenses (source: AMD Q4 2025 earnings call). She sat at the head table with Xi Jinping at the White House state dinner on September 24, 2026 (source: SCMP, via The Korea Times).

How often does AMD report its China revenue?

AMD gives its China revenue once a year, in the geography note of its annual 10-K. Its 10-Q for the three months to June 27, 2026 gives an international share instead. International sales, based on where customers who bought directly from AMD are billed, were 70% of revenue in that quarter and 71% a year earlier. For the first six months of 2026 the share was 72%, against 69% a year before (source: AMD 10-Q, Q2 2026).

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include AMD's Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 27, 2026, its Form 8-K of April 16, 2025 and its earnings calls of February 3 and May 5, 2026. They also include the Bureau of Industry and Security's rules of November 2025 and January 2026 and its January 2026 release, Proclamation 11002, the White House fact sheet of September 25, 2026, Xilinx's Form 8-K of January 27, 2022, Nvidia's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended October 26, 2025, reporting by Tom's Hardware, Reuters, the Associated Press, Roll Call, Fox Business and the South China Morning Post, and BloFin's listing notice, stock futures notice and liquidation rules, current as of September 28, 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold AMD in any form. A US license decision, a new chip tariff or a ruling in Beijing on which chips its companies may import can move AMD's price within hours. That news can land outside regular weekday trading hours, when BloFin may accept only reduce-only orders on the AMDUSDT Perpetual, so a leveraged position that falls to its maintenance margin can be reduced or liquidated while new orders can only cut it. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.