The rules cover advanced AI chip models, restricting sales based on the buyer’s country of origin rather than their location.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued guidance confirming that export license requirements for high-end AI chips apply to any Chinese or Macau-owned company, wherever it operates. An export license requires government permission to sell restricted technology to a specific buyer. For advanced AI chips, a U.S. company cannot complete the sale without prior approval from the Commerce Department.  The requirement has applied to Chinese-owned companies since 2023, regardless of where they are incorporated.

The confusion arose in 2025. The Biden administration’s AI Diffusion Rule added a broader set of chip export restrictions based on destination country. When the Trump administration announced in May 2025 that it would not enforce those new requirements, some exporters read it as a pause on all chip export controls. It was not. BIS is clarifying that the 2023 ownership-based rule was always in effect and remains active.

The controls apply to high-compute AI chips such as NVIDIA’s Blackwell B200 and AMD’s MI350X.

The guidance arrives against a complicated policy backdrop. In December 2025, President Trump cleared the way for NVIDIA to export H200 chips to approved customers in China, reversing years of tightening restrictions. Some Chinese companies were interested, including ByteDance and Alibaba. The Chinese government did not approve purchases, despite demand from Chinese firms. The May 31 guidance makes it clear that, even with the market opening, Chinese-owned companies cannot route chip purchases through foreign subsidiaries to sidestep the licensing requirement.