AMD Stock Drops Amid AI Chip Export Ban: What's Going On?

Advanced Micro Devices Inc AMD shares are trading lower by 12.6% to $84.87 over the trailing week. Investors are weighing new U.S. government restrictions on AI chip exports to China and several other regions.

The restrictions have elevated concerns about the company’s exposure to geopolitical risk and supply chain disruptions in key international markets.

What To Know: The latest measures from the U.S. government—expanding upon the Biden administration's ongoing strategy to limit China's access to advanced AI hardware—now require AMD to obtain licenses to sell its MI308 data center GPUs in China, Hong Kong, Macau and countries listed under the Department of Commerce’s “D:5” designation, which includes nations of national security concern.

The MI308 is AMD's most advanced data center GPU to date, designed for training and inferencing large AI models. It directly competes with NVIDIA Corp’s NVDA H100 in high-performance computing applications and forms a crucial pillar of AMD's push into AI infrastructure markets.

The licensing requirements now create an additional bottleneck for AMD in a region that had been a significant source of demand for its AI accelerators.

Financial Fallout: In anticipation of a sharp decline in sales to China, AMD has taken a one-time inventory charge of $800 million related to unsold or redirected chips and expects a $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion hit to revenue—equivalent to roughly 10% of its projected 2025 data center business.

This comes at a critical moment for AMD, as it has aggressively ramped up its AI ambitions through investments in hardware, software stacks like ROCm and ecosystem partnerships.

Broader Implications: The export restrictions are part of a broader U.S. effort to curtail China’s access to cutting-edge AI hardware amid growing national security tensions.

While demand for AI infrastructure in China remains robust, analysts expect an accelerated pivot toward domestically developed solutions, such as Huawei's Ascend AI chips.

This shift could undercut AMD’s long-term positioning in one of the world’s largest tech markets. Unlike NVIDIA, which benefits from stronger software ecosystems (CUDA) and more diverse hardware offerings, AMD is still in the earlier stages of building out a comprehensive AI platform.

Custom silicon developers and hyperscalers designing in-house chips remain unaffected by the new rules—giving them a strategic edge over traditional chipmakers like AMD, whose offerings are subject to export controls.

Investors can gain exposure to AMD by investing in the VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH.

How To Buy AMD Stock

By now you're likely curious about how to participate in the market for Advanced Micro Devices – be it to purchase shares, or even attempt to bet against the company.

Buying shares is typically done through a brokerage account. You can find a list of possible trading platforms here. Many will allow you to buy “fractional shares,” which allows you to own portions of stock without buying an entire share.

In the case of Advanced Micro Devices, which is trading at $85.34 as of publishing time, $100 would buy you 1.17 shares of stock.

If you're looking to bet against a company, the process is more complex. You'll need access to an options trading platform, or a broker who will allow you to “go short” a share of stock by lending you the shares to sell. The process of shorting a stock can be found at this resource. Otherwise, if your broker allows you to trade options, you can either buy a put option, or sell a call option at a strike price above where shares are currently trading – either way it allows you to profit off of the share price decline.

According to data from Benzinga Pro, AMD has a 52-week high of $187.28 and a 52-week low of $76.48.

AMDAdvanced Micro Devices Inc

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