Export approvals stalling

U.S. approvals for advanced artificial intelligence chip exports are slowing as the Commerce Department office that signs off on them has lost nearly a fifth of its licensing staff. (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg reported on April 10 that the Bureau of Industry and Security has seen staffing attrition in the teams handling export licenses and rulemaking, leaving reviews that now stretch for months. The same report said the slowdown is holding up shipments tied to Nvidia processors and other sensitive technology exports. (bloomberg.com) The Bureau of Industry and Security is the Commerce Department agency that enforces export controls, the rules that decide which U.S. technologies can be sold abroad and to whom. Its website says the bureau’s job is to protect national security while regulating sensitive exports, and a June 2025 Government Accountability Office report said the agency had 585 funded positions in fiscal 2024, up from 403 in fiscal 2013. (bis.gov, gao.gov) The bottleneck lands in the middle of a policy shift on artificial intelligence chips. On January 13, 2026, the Bureau of Industry and Security said it would review license applications for Nvidia H200 chips, Advanced Micro Devices MI325X chips, and similar semiconductors to China on a case-by-case basis if security conditions are met. (bis.gov) That change turned licensing speed into a business issue. If a chip is legally exportable but the license sits in a queue, cloud companies, data center builders, and foreign governments still do not get the hardware on time. (bis.gov) The hardware involved is not generic server gear. Nvidia says the H200 carries 141 gigabytes of HBM3e memory and 4.8 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth, specifications aimed at running and training large artificial intelligence models in data centers. (nvidia.com) The Bureau of Industry and Security processed nearly 38,000 license applications in its last published annual report and approved 85% of them, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg also reported that annual reports for 2024 and 2025 have not yet been published, leaving outside companies with less recent public data on how quickly the system is moving. (bloomberg.com) Industry complaints now extend beyond one shipment or one country. Export Compliance Daily reported on April 14 that a Center for Strategic and International Studies survey found 54% of companies said they lost business because of Bureau of Industry and Security license delays in 2025, while 62% said delays damaged existing customer relationships. (exportcompliancedaily.com) The Commerce Department has defended tighter review. In earlier reporting on a separate 2025 backlog, a department spokesperson said the Bureau of Industry and Security would “no longer rubber-stamp” applications that raise national security questions and said the agency was pursuing “strong rules and aggressive enforcement.” (usnews.com) The result is a system where Washington is allowing some advanced chip sales in principle while struggling to clear them in practice. Until staffing and review times improve, export policy will keep being measured not just by what the rules permit, but by which approved orders actually leave the warehouse. (bloomberg.com)