US Policy Tightens Controls and Adds Costs on Exports of Advanced AI Accelerators
The U.S. government issued new, compliance-heavy rules governing exports of advanced AI/HPC accelerators to China and Macau, keeping a general presumption of denial while allowing limited, case-by-case licensing for narrowly defined parts such as Nvidia H200 and AMD Instinct MI325X. Eligibility is tied to technical thresholds (e.g., total processing performance and memory bandwidth caps) and to supply-side constraints intended to prevent disruption of U.S. availability, including requirements that exports not exceed shipments to U.S. entities and that products be readily available domestically—effectively constraining China-only SKUs and tightening scrutiny of re-exports and certain restricted destinations.
Separately, the Trump Administration announced a 25% tariff on exports of certain “advanced computer chips,” explicitly naming the H200 and MI325X, while carving out domestic usage (U.S.-based datacenters, R&D, startups, public sector, and non-datacenter applications) so U.S. customers are not expected to bear the fee. The policy also adds an exporter burden to demonstrate domestic demand is met before shipping abroad and signals potential further adjustments within 90 days, increasing uncertainty for vendors and customers planning non-U.S. deployments of advanced AI compute.
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