Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) could face a penalty of $1 billion or more to settle a U.S. export control investigation over a chip it made that ended up inside a Huawei artificial intelligence processor, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Department of Commerce has been investigating the world¡¯s biggest contract chipmaker¡¯s work for China-based Sophgo, the sources said. The design company¡¯s TSMC-made chip matched one found in Huawei¡¯s high-end Ascend 910B artificial intelligence processor, according to the people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Huawei ¡ª a company at the center of China¡¯s AI chip ambitions that has been accused of sanctions busting and trade secret theft ¡ª is on a U.S. trade list that restricts it from receiving goods made with U.S. technology. TSMC made nearly 3 million chips in recent years that matched the design ordered by Sophgo and likely ended up with Huawei, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND¡¯s Technology and Security and Policy Center in Arlington, Virginia, who is tracking Chinese developments in AI.
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