AI chip export approvals slow
Approvals for Nvidia and AMD AI-chip exports to China have stalled as the Bureau of Industry and Security lost nearly a fifth of its licensing staff, and Nvidia had reportedly not sold an H200 into China nearly three months after formal approval. The administrative bottleneck frames AI supply as constrained by permissions and capacity rather than solely by product demand. (tomshardware.com)
Approvals to ship Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices artificial intelligence chips to China are piling up inside the Commerce Department, turning export policy into a staffing problem as much as a trade one. (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg reported on April 10 that the Bureau of Industry and Security lost dozens of experienced employees over the past year, amounting to nearly 20% turnover among rulemaking and licensing staff. The same report said tighter review by top officials has stretched approvals for chipmakers and other exporters into delays lasting several months. (bloomberg.com) That slowdown is hitting products the Trump administration had already moved to clear. The Bureau of Industry and Security said on January 13 it would review export license applications for Nvidia H200, Advanced Micro Devices MI325X, and similar chips to China on a case-by-case basis if security conditions were met. (bis.gov) Nvidia’s H200 is a data-center chip used to train and run large artificial intelligence models, and China has been one of the company’s most important overseas markets. Reuters reported on March 17 that China had approved H200 sales, after Nvidia had already received some United States approvals, reopening a market that once generated 13% of Nvidia’s total revenue. (usnews.com) Even after that, sales were not moving quickly. Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on March 17 that the company had received purchase orders and was restarting manufacturing, but Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress had told analysts on February 25 that a small number of H200 products had been approved for China and the company had “yet to generate any revenue.” (cnbc.com) Advanced Micro Devices has run into the same licensing maze with its China-specific MI308 chip. In July 2025, the company said the Commerce Department had told it license applications for MI308 exports to China would move forward for review, with shipments to start only after approvals were issued. (cnbc.com) The bottleneck reaches beyond China. Bloomberg said licenses tied to shipments for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also routed through the Bureau of Industry and Security, adding to a backlog worth billions of dollars across products bound for allies as well as rivals. (bloomberg.com) The Bureau of Industry and Security sits inside the Commerce Department and handles export licenses for sensitive United States technology, so even a chip that is legal to sell still needs a case file, reviewers, and sign-off. When staffing drops and senior officials pull more decisions upward, the queue itself becomes part of the policy. (bloomberg.com) For Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, that means demand in China is only one piece of the story. The other piece is whether Washington can process approvals fast enough for shipments to leave at all. (bloomberg.com)
