(Reuters) -Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) said on Tuesday it has informed the United States of a possible attempt to have AI chips produced for China’s Huawei to bypass export controls.
The US government two years ago restricted exports of high-end AI chips to China, citing the need to limit the capabilities of the Chinese military.
TSMC’s U.S.-listed shares fell 1.7% in early trading.
The US Commerce Department is investigating whether TSMC made chips for China’s Huawei, whose access to non-Chinese chips has been restricted by US export controls. TSMC, which counts Apple and Nvidia among its customers, has benefited from a surge in AI development across a spectrum of industries. The Taiwanese contract chip maker, the Ministry of Commerce and Huawei did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
TSMC had recently notified the US Department of Commerce after a customer placed orders for a chip similar to Huawei’s Ascend 910B, a processor designed for training large language models, according to a Financial Times report earlier in the day.
A key part of the export controls is a rule that bans global chipmakers from using U.S. technology or equipment to produce chips intended for Huawei or its products.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
