Staffing at the U.S. Commerce Department office that vets exports of Nvidia and AMD AI accelerators has collapsed over the past year, and approval times for chipmakers are now running into months, Bloomberg has reported.
Citing more than 20 people familiar with the situation, it’s understood that the Bureau of Industry and Security is struggling to process a workload expanded by the Trump administration’s tariff probes and AI chip export reviews, while Under Secretary of Commerce Jeffrey Kessler is insisting on personally examining nearly every license application and telling companies to “simply call him to have a license approved.”
