The H200 opening to China carries a 50 per cent compute cap and lab testing of every shipment

On 13 January 2026 the Bureau of Industry and Security announced that licence applications for certain advanced computing chips bound for China would be reviewed case by case instead of being presumptively denied. The announcement framed the change as three things an exporter must demonstrate. The rule that carried it into law, published two days later, sets out nine certifications, and one of the additions is a cap on how much computing power may go to China that the announcement did not mention.

The BIS press release named the Nvidia H200 and the AMD MI325X. It said applicants must show that exporting to China will not reduce global semiconductor production capacity currently available to United States customers, that the Chinese purchaser has adopted export compliance procedures including customer screening, and that the product has undergone independent third party testing in the United States to verify performance and security. Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler said that permitting the sale of the H200 to China under controlled conditions would strengthen the American technology ecosystem.

The final rule, Revision to License Review Policy for Advanced Computing Commodities, was published in the Federal Register and took effect on 15 January 2026. It does not define eligibility by brand. It defines it by performance: total processing performance below 21,000 and total DRAM bandwidth below 6,500 gigabytes per second, with the H200 and the MI325X offered as examples of hardware that qualifies. The certifications the rule lists include sufficient supply of the product in the United States so that domestic orders are not disrupted, no diversion of global foundry capacity away from advanced chip production for the United States, no military end use and no prohibited parties, demonstrated security procedures at the recipient, disclosure of remote infrastructure as a service end users in sanctioned countries, and two conditions that change the commercial shape of the policy. The first, in the rule's words, is that the aggregate total processing performance of advanced node integrated circuits exported to China or Macau will be no more than 50 per cent of the aggregate total processing performance shipped to customers in the United States for end use in the United States. That is a ceiling measured in compute rather than in units. The second is that, prior to export on an approved licence, every shipment of advanced computing commodities described in the licence application will be reviewed by a qualified third party testing lab, which is a per consignment obligation rather than a one off product certification.

The second half of the story is usually told as a loophole being closed. On 31 May 2026 BIS issued Guidance Regarding Enforcement of License Requirements for Advanced Computing Items for Entities Headquartered in Country Group D:5 and Macau, and Al Jazeera reported it on 1 June 2026 as the United States saying its ban applied to Chinese firms outside China. The guidance says a licence is required to export advanced computing items to entities headquartered in Country Group D:5 or Macau, or whose ultimate parent company is headquartered there, even where the entity itself sits outside those destinations.

On its own account, though, the guidance is not new law. It states that the licence requirement was first introduced on 17 November 2023, implemented as an end user control in section 744.23(a)(3) of the Export Administration Regulations. In January 2025 the AI Diffusion Rule moved the requirement for the relevant items into section 742.6 as part of a new worldwide licence requirement. In May 2025 BIS announced it would not enforce the AI Diffusion Rule's new compliance requirements. Exporters then asked whether the 2023 requirement was still live for China headquartered entities located in countries that had not previously needed a licence. BIS wrote that the answer is yes, that the requirement continues to apply under section 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) to all destinations outside the United States, and that its non enforcement policy reaches only items that are not destined for such entities. The guidance also tells bona fide data centre operators they need not stop the ongoing use, storage, disposal or servicing of advanced computing items they already hold, until further notice. A frequently asked questions document updated on 17 June 2026 confirmed the guidance covers 3A090.a and 4A090.a items and related paragraph .z items such as 5A002.z.1.a.

So the extraterritorial reading is a reaffirmation of a two and a half year old control that had been obscured by a rule the government declined to enforce, rather than a fresh restriction. That distinction matters for anyone assessing legal exposure for shipments made in the intervening period.

Several things remain unknown. Al Jazeera reported that Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs remain barred from China, and quoted the former State Department official Chris McGuire saying Chinese companies had very likely been buying restricted chips at scale. The January rule names no Blackwell part at all, and works from the performance thresholds instead, so the barrier there is arithmetic rather than a named prohibition. BIS has not published how many licences have been granted under the new review policy, how the 50 per cent ratio is computed or audited, or what happens to installed hardware once the until further notice period ends.