America’s AI chip giant is returning to the Chinese market. In its latest earnings release and conference call, AMD for the first time disclosed its China sales for the fourth quarter of last year and, after a three-quarter gap, once again included positive expected revenue from China in its guidance.

After the U.S. market closed on February 3, AMD released its 2025 Q4 and full-year results, posting performance that set multiple records in the company’s history.

In Q4, AMD reported revenue of $10.27 billion (up 34% year over year and 11% quarter over quarter), non-GAAP net income of $2.52 billion (up 42% year over year and 28% quarter over quarter), and diluted earnings per share of $1.53. For the full year, it posted revenue of $34.64 billion (up 34% year over year), non-GAAP net income of $6.83 billion (up 26% year over year), and diluted EPS of $4.17.

AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su said this was mainly driven by “strong execution and broad demand for high-performance computing and AI products.”

In Q4, revenue from AMD’s data center segment rose 39% year over year to a record $5.4 billion, primarily fueled by accelerated deployments of the Instinct MI350 series GPUs and gains in server market share.

Su remained upbeat about the boost that AI demand is giving to CPUs, GPUs, and other products. She expressed strong confidence in the market outlook for the company’s next-generation MI400 series and the Helios platform, reiterating that AMD is expected to deliver a compound annual growth rate of more than 35% over the next three to five years. Of that, annual revenue growth in the data center segment is projected to exceed 60%, with the AI business expanding to tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue by 2027.

In fact, the company’s Q1 revenue guidance of $9.8 billion (plus or minus $300 million) fell short of the market’s previously upbeat expectations. Combined with a resurgence of “AI bubble” concerns and unusual moves in tech stocks triggered by Anthropic’s latest AI legal plug-in, AMD shares plunged more than 8% in after-hours trading.

On the earnings call, AMD’s China business drew particular attention.

In the fourth quarter, AMD’s MI308 generated roughly $390 million in revenue in the China market. In its Q1 performance outlook, AMD specifically noted that this included an expected $100 million in revenue from MI308 sales to China.

After the Trump administration imposed export restrictions on shipments to China in April 2025 affecting Nvidia, AMD, and others, AMD’s GPUs struggled to generate revenue at scale in the China market. When the company released its Q1 2025 earnings report, it provided quantified negative guidance for its future China business; since then, its outlooks have not included China data center business.

AMD Executive Vice President and CFO Hu Jin also said that, benefiting from the reversal of a previously recognized $360 million MI308 inventory write-down, the company’s non-GAAP gross margin in Q4 rose by 3 percentage points both year over year and quarter over quarter to 57%. Excluding that factor, gross margin would have declined to 55%.

Su said the company was satisfied that it was able to achieve a certain level of MI308 shipments in the China market in Q4. She revealed that these orders actually dated back to earlier in 2025, and shipments were only made in Q4 after an export license was approved by the U.S. government.

On AMD’s future in the China market, Su said, “This is a very dynamic situation, and we’re still waiting,” adding that “it’s prudent not to forecast any additional revenue beyond the $100 million mentioned in the Q1 guidance.”

In addition, she disclosed that the company has already applied for an export license for the higher-performance MI325 chip and will continue working with customers.

Launched in Q4 2024, the MI325 is the previous-generation chip in AMD’s current AI-chip lineup—one generation behind the flagship MI350 series—and it has never entered the China market.

After Trump announced on December 8 last year that Nvidia would be allowed to export H200 chips to China after paying 25% of sales proceeds (more advanced than the H20 previously exported to China), with the same rules applying to AMD and Intel, AMD moved quickly.

On the one hand, it strengthened its ties with China, with Su frequently meeting senior government and business leaders; on the other hand, it filed an export license application for the MI325.

On January 13, after the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security introduced new rules that shifted exports of AI chips to China from a “presumption of denial” to “case-by-case review,” according to the parameters listed in the relevant documents, both the H200 and the MI325 met the eligibility requirements for export.

However, a range of recent market signals suggests that the ways Nvidia and AMD do business in China—and the environment they face there—will differ markedly.