AMD’s AI datacenter revenue dived due to US ban on China GPU exports
(2025/08/06)
- Reference: 1754447288
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/06/amd_q2_2025/
- Source link:
AMD’s revenue from AI products destined for datacenters dipped in the quarter ended June 28th, thanks to the USA’s ban on GPU exports to China.
The chip design firm’s results were strong overall, with revenue of $7.7 billion representing 32 percent year-on-year growth and net income jumping 229 percent to $872 million. Datacenter sales rose 14 percent year over year to $3.2 billion, with EPYC processors leading the way.
Datacenter revenue would have been better were it not for the Trump administration’s ban on selling the Instinct MI308 accelerator to China, which cost AMD $800 million and dragged its gross margins down.
[1]
While the Trump administration has [2]signalled it will allow AMD to resume sales of the Instinct MI308 to China, the company decided not to forecast any revenue from the part in this quarter. CEO Lisa Su told investors the US Department of Commerce is reviewing AMD’s application for a license that will allow it to resume Instinct MI308 exports to the Middle Kingdom.
[3]
[4]
While the China crisis caused concern at AMD, the company was pleased with its performance.
CEO Lisa Su pointed to record sales for EPYC and Ryzen CPUs.
[5]
“We saw robust demand across our EPYC portfolio to power cloud and enterprise workloads and increasingly for emerging AI use cases,” she said. “In particular, adoption of agentic AI is creating additional demand for general purpose compute infrastructure as customers quickly realize that each token generated by a GPU triggers multiple CPU-intensive tasks.”
Su also said that volume production of AMD’s MI350 accelerators – the parts it says match the performance of Nvidia’s Blackwell kit – began in June and is ahead of schedule.
“We expect a steep production ramp in the second half of the year to support large-scale production deployments with multiple customers,” she said.
[6]
The CEO said work on AMD’s next-generation MI400 series accelerators “is progressing rapidly.”
“These are the most advanced GPUs we have ever built with up to 40 petaflops of FP4 AI performance and 50 percent more memory, memory bandwidth and scale-out throughput than the competition,” Su said, adding that AMD’s planned [7]Helios rack scale rigs that employ the part will include up to 72 GPUs in each rack, and “is expected to deliver up to a 10x generational performance increase for the most advanced Frontier models.”
Su said AMD believes Helios will be “the highest-performance AI system in the world when it launches” and said development of the product is going well ahead of a planned 2026 launch.
[8]AMD bets on rack-scale compute to boost AI efficiency 20x by 2030
[9]A billion dollars' worth of Nvidia chips fell off a truck and found their way to China, report says
[10]AMD warns of new Meltdown, Spectre-like bugs affecting CPUs
[11]Oracle just signed one mystery customer that will double its cloud revenue in 2028
AMD will sell Helios to its “largest customers” – essentially hyperscalers – and is working with them to ensure the systems are compatible with their datacenters. That contrasts with the MI350 series, which users can deploy in existing bit barns.
“Looking ahead, we see a clear path to scaling our AI business to tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue,” Su said.
Ryzen desktop sales
Revenue from desktop products reached $3.6 billion, up 69 percent year-over-year. Client revenue hit $2.5 billion, up 67 percent year-over-year.
AMD said demand for new Zen 5 and Ryzen parts drove the revenue increase. Gamers drove a 73 percent revenue rise to $1.1 billion.
On the desktop, Su said AMD is confident it can “continue growing client processor revenue ahead of the market over the coming quarters”, suggesting the company thinks it can outpace Intel and keep Qualcomm quiet.
CFO Jean X Hu predicted Q3 revenue will reach approximately $8.7 billion, plus or minus $300 million, representing approximately 28 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Hu added that if China resumes buying at past levels, AMD’s future quarterly revenue could rise by another $800 million.
The chip designer can use that revenue, because the charge it took from being unable to sell to China dented profits badly and led investors to send its share price down almost six percent in after-hours trading.
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[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/amd_china_chips/
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/amd_helios_dc/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/amd_20x_30/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/nvidia_chips_china_whoops/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/09/amd_tsa_side_channel/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/01/oracle_cloud_ai/
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The chip design firm’s results were strong overall, with revenue of $7.7 billion representing 32 percent year-on-year growth and net income jumping 229 percent to $872 million. Datacenter sales rose 14 percent year over year to $3.2 billion, with EPYC processors leading the way.
Datacenter revenue would have been better were it not for the Trump administration’s ban on selling the Instinct MI308 accelerator to China, which cost AMD $800 million and dragged its gross margins down.
[1]
While the Trump administration has [2]signalled it will allow AMD to resume sales of the Instinct MI308 to China, the company decided not to forecast any revenue from the part in this quarter. CEO Lisa Su told investors the US Department of Commerce is reviewing AMD’s application for a license that will allow it to resume Instinct MI308 exports to the Middle Kingdom.
[3]
[4]
While the China crisis caused concern at AMD, the company was pleased with its performance.
CEO Lisa Su pointed to record sales for EPYC and Ryzen CPUs.
[5]
“We saw robust demand across our EPYC portfolio to power cloud and enterprise workloads and increasingly for emerging AI use cases,” she said. “In particular, adoption of agentic AI is creating additional demand for general purpose compute infrastructure as customers quickly realize that each token generated by a GPU triggers multiple CPU-intensive tasks.”
Su also said that volume production of AMD’s MI350 accelerators – the parts it says match the performance of Nvidia’s Blackwell kit – began in June and is ahead of schedule.
“We expect a steep production ramp in the second half of the year to support large-scale production deployments with multiple customers,” she said.
[6]
The CEO said work on AMD’s next-generation MI400 series accelerators “is progressing rapidly.”
“These are the most advanced GPUs we have ever built with up to 40 petaflops of FP4 AI performance and 50 percent more memory, memory bandwidth and scale-out throughput than the competition,” Su said, adding that AMD’s planned [7]Helios rack scale rigs that employ the part will include up to 72 GPUs in each rack, and “is expected to deliver up to a 10x generational performance increase for the most advanced Frontier models.”
Su said AMD believes Helios will be “the highest-performance AI system in the world when it launches” and said development of the product is going well ahead of a planned 2026 launch.
[8]AMD bets on rack-scale compute to boost AI efficiency 20x by 2030
[9]A billion dollars' worth of Nvidia chips fell off a truck and found their way to China, report says
[10]AMD warns of new Meltdown, Spectre-like bugs affecting CPUs
[11]Oracle just signed one mystery customer that will double its cloud revenue in 2028
AMD will sell Helios to its “largest customers” – essentially hyperscalers – and is working with them to ensure the systems are compatible with their datacenters. That contrasts with the MI350 series, which users can deploy in existing bit barns.
“Looking ahead, we see a clear path to scaling our AI business to tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue,” Su said.
Ryzen desktop sales
Revenue from desktop products reached $3.6 billion, up 69 percent year-over-year. Client revenue hit $2.5 billion, up 67 percent year-over-year.
AMD said demand for new Zen 5 and Ryzen parts drove the revenue increase. Gamers drove a 73 percent revenue rise to $1.1 billion.
On the desktop, Su said AMD is confident it can “continue growing client processor revenue ahead of the market over the coming quarters”, suggesting the company thinks it can outpace Intel and keep Qualcomm quiet.
CFO Jean X Hu predicted Q3 revenue will reach approximately $8.7 billion, plus or minus $300 million, representing approximately 28 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Hu added that if China resumes buying at past levels, AMD’s future quarterly revenue could rise by another $800 million.
The chip designer can use that revenue, because the charge it took from being unable to sell to China dented profits badly and led investors to send its share price down almost six percent in after-hours trading.
®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJLTR9VLpITvPuNhV1C0eAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/amd_china_chips/
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/amd_helios_dc/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/amd_20x_30/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/nvidia_chips_china_whoops/
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[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/01/oracle_cloud_ai/
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