AI‑chip exports stalled by licensing bottleneck
Approvals for Nvidia and AMD AI‑chip exports to China have stalled despite cleared deals, with the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security reportedly suffering nearly 20% staff turnover that is slowing licensing. The administrative strain means formal permission alone is not guaranteeing shipments, creating an operational chokepoint for compute access. (tomshardware.com)
Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices can win permission in Washington and still wait months to ship artificial intelligence chips to China. (finance.yahoo.com) The holdup sits inside the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Commerce Department office that reviews sensitive exports. Bloomberg reported on April 10 that turnover among its rulemaking and licensing staff has run at nearly 20%, and a broader headcount review found the bureau had lost 101 employees, or 19%, since 2024. (bloomberg.com) (finance.yahoo.com) Those staffing losses have stretched license reviews into months. Finance Yahoo’s April 13 summary of the Bloomberg report said average turnaround time rose to 76 days in the first half of 2025, up from 38 days in 2023. (finance.yahoo.com) The slowdown is hitting products the Trump administration had already moved to allow under tighter supervision. On January 13, 2026, the Bureau of Industry and Security said it would review export applications for Nvidia’s H200, Advanced Micro Devices’ MI325X, and similar chips on a case-by-case basis if applicants met security conditions. (bis.gov) That January rule followed President Donald Trump’s December 8, 2025 announcement that the United States would allow H200-class chips to approved Chinese customers. The agency said exporters must show the sale would not cut supply for United States buyers and that the Chinese customer had compliance procedures and third-party testing in the United States. (bis.gov) The practical problem is that a license policy is not the same thing as a shipment. Bloomberg reported that Nvidia had not sold a single H200 to China months after the White House cleared the deal, despite receiving orders. (finance.yahoo.com) This comes after a year of shifting rules for China-bound accelerators, the specialized processors used to train and run large artificial intelligence models. On April 15, 2025, Nvidia disclosed that the United States government had imposed an indefinite license requirement on its H20 chip for China, and the next day the Commerce Department said the same licensing requirement applied to Advanced Micro Devices’ MI308 and equivalent chips. (techcrunch.com) (cnbc.com) The bureau’s workload has also grown beyond China chip reviews. Bloomberg said the same office has been handling tariff investigations across sectors including autos and steel, while Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler has tightened oversight of license decisions. (bloomberg.com) (finance.yahoo.com) The result is a bottleneck in the paperwork, not the factory. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices can design China-compliant chips and line up buyers, but the export pipeline still runs at the speed of the licensing desk. (finance.yahoo.com)
