US imposes sanctions for using Huawei chips

The Trump administration has taken a tougher stance on Chinese technology, warning companies around the world that using Huawei’s AI chips could subject them to criminal penalties for violating U.S. export controls. The Commerce Department has clarified that Huawei’s Ascend chips are subject to export restrictions because they almost certainly contain or were manufactured using U.S. technology. The Bureau of Industry and Security has said it is taking a tougher approach to foreign AI chips, including noting that using Huawei’s Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates U.S. export regulations. But experts say this is not a new regulation, just a clarification of existing rules.

Lawyer Kevin Wolfe explained that the guidance does not introduce new restrictions, but rather reaffirms the position that simply using Huawei's advanced chips can be considered an export control violation. The focus was on three Huawei chips — the Ascend 910B, 910C, and 910D — that the bureau believes were developed using U.S. technology or manufactured on equipment associated with the U.S.

The move comes as Washington grows increasingly concerned about Huawei’s pace of development in advanced chips and AI solutions. The company already supplies Chinese customers with clusters of AI chips that it claims outperform U.S. leader Nvidia’s products in key areas such as computing power and memory. While individual 910C chips are inferior to Nvidia’s top-end offerings, clustering them together allows Huawei to achieve higher performance than its rival’s counterparts.