AMD still gets about one-fifth of its revenue from China, CEO Lisa Su said, even as U.S. export controls restrict sales of advanced graphics processors to the country. The 20% figure, disclosed during a recent earnings call, underscores how deeply the chipmaker remains tied to a market Washington is trying to wall off.
Why the share matters
China has long been a major source of sales for AMD and rivals like Nvidia. But the U.S. government, citing national security, has tightened rules on shipping high-performance GPUs — the kind used for AI training — to Chinese buyers. AMD, like Nvidia, has had to design lower-end chips that comply with the restrictions. Even so, Su's comment suggests that AMD's China business has not collapsed under the new regime.
Investors watch the China number closely. Any sudden drop would signal that sanctions are biting deeper than expected. A stable 20% indicates that AMD is still finding ways to serve customers there, likely through its consumer PC and data-center products that fall below the export threshold.
What the controls cover
The restrictions target GPUs with high interconnect speeds and compute capacity. AMD's MI300 line, built for AI workloads, is among the affected chips. The company has said it applied for licenses to sell some models but has not disclosed which ones were approved. Su did not detail how much of that 20% comes from restricted versus unrestricted products.
Other U.S. chip firms have also felt the squeeze. But AMD's revenue mix — roughly half from PC chips and half from data-center and gaming — means it has more leeway than companies that rely almost entirely on AI accelerators.
AMD faces a balancing act: keep Chinese customers happy without running afoul of U.S. law. Su's statement implies the company has managed that so far. But the regulatory landscape shifts often. The Biden administration has updated the export rules twice in the past year, each time narrowing the loopholes.
For now, AMD's China business holds steady at 20%. The question that hangs over the company — and that Su did not answer directly — is how long that can last if Washington keeps tightening the screws. The next round of rule changes is expected later this year.
