Chip‑export approvals stalled
Approvals for Nvidia and AMD AI‑chip exports to China have slowed after the U.S. export control agency lost nearly a fifth of its licensing staff, creating a licensing bottleneck. (tomshardware.com) The article notes that, despite earlier approvals in principle, no H200 shipments to China had moved because of the administrative backlog. (tomshardware.com)
A staffing crunch inside the U.S. export-control office is slowing approvals for Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to ship artificial-intelligence chips to China. (bloomberg.com) The office is the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Commerce Department unit that reviews sensitive technology exports. Bloomberg reported it has lost 101 employees since 2024, a 19% drop, while license reviews that averaged 38 days in 2023 stretched to 76 days in the first half of 2025. (finance.yahoo.com) Those delays now hit the exact products Washington spent the past year trying to reopen for China. On January 13, 2026, the Bureau of Industry and Security said it would review Nvidia H200, Advanced Micro Devices MI325X, and similar chip applications case by case instead of blocking them outright. (bis.gov) That January rule came after President Donald Trump said on December 8, 2025 that approved Chinese customers could buy H200-class chips under controlled conditions. The bureau said applicants would have to show the sale would not reduce supply for U.S. customers and that the buyer had compliance systems and U.S.-based third-party testing in place. (bis.gov) In plain terms, these are permits for processors that train and run large artificial-intelligence models, the same kind of chips cloud companies use to build chatbots and image generators. Even after the policy opened a path on paper, companies still needed individual licenses before any shipment could move. (bis.gov) Nvidia said on March 17, 2026 that it had already received purchase orders from China and was restarting manufacturing for H200 systems. Chief Executive Jensen Huang said the company had clearance from both governments, but Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress had said on February 25 that only a small number of H200 products had been approved and the company had generated no China revenue from them. (cnbc.com) The bottleneck follows a sharp policy turn from last year. On April 15, 2025, the Commerce Department imposed license requirements on Nvidia’s H20 and Advanced Micro Devices’ MI308 chips for China, tightening access to a market that had once produced at least one-fifth of Nvidia’s data-center revenue. (cnbc.com 1) (cnbc.com 2) Bloomberg said the Bureau of Industry and Security is also handling tariff investigations and Middle East chip-export cases, and that Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler has been reviewing nearly every license himself. That has left Nvidia’s China H200 shipments and Advanced Micro Devices approvals sitting in the same queue as a larger, more complicated caseload. (bloomberg.com) (finance.yahoo.com) So the current holdup is less about a new public ban than about a permit system that opened, then jammed. The rulebook changed in January; the paperwork is still deciding when the chips actually leave. (bis.gov) (finance.yahoo.com)
