TSMC threatens US billion penalty due to supposed chip deliveries to Huawei

The world’s largest chip assignment TSMC could be proven by the United States with a billion dollar penalty at this level due to violations of export bans from semiconductors. Because now it is reported that the US Ministry of Trade is investigating the chipletes produced by the Taiwanian chipper tiger within AI accelerators Huaweis. This has been banned due to the trade restrictions from Taiwan and supported by the USA since September 2020.

Already last autumn, TSMC technology was surprisingly found in Huawei’s AI accelerator. After examining the processor of Huawei’s AI accelerator card atlas 300T A2, it turned out that the Ascend 910b manufactured by Huawei daughter Hisilicon, partly came from Taiwanian production. But TSMC is completely prohibited from cooperation with Huawei and other Chinese companies. While Huawei even denied the Ascend 910b ever launched, TSMC denied any deliveries to Huawei after September 2020.

Nevertheless, the guesswork continued to accelerate TSMC chips in Huawei, because the Chinese company Sophgo is said to have been a middle man to lock TSMC chips to Huawei. This company, which specializes in use-specific tasks, is said to have commissioned the chips from TSMC and then passed on to Huawei. However, TSMC has now stopped all deliveries to Sophgo and immediately denied Sophgo. According to TSMC, the company has presented evidence that show that “Sophgo has nothing to do with the Huawei examination”.

Investigation of 3 million chips

Although TSMC had still said that the US Ministry of Trade is communicated with regard to this matter and there is no evidence that TSMC is currently the subject of an investigation. But now reports Reuters the contrary. Accordingly, the Ministry of Commerce has actually examined the cooperation of the chip mandate with Sophgo after a semiconductor component made by TSMC was found in Huawei Ascend 910B AI processor.

According to Lennart Heim, researcher from the Rand Corporation Technology and Security Center, TSMC has produced almost three million chips in recent years, which corresponds to the design commissioned by Sophgo and who ultimately ended up at Huawei. Rand is one of the most famous think tanks in the world and observes China’s developments in artificial intelligence (AI).

Billiarli penalty would probably be a new record

A ten -digit punishment is rare for violations of export bans, because this is calculated based on the products delivered. In 2023, Seagate paid a record penalty for hard disk deliveries to Huawei. That was $ 300 million. The hard disk manufacturer and the US Ministry of Trade agreed on this by comparison, with the value of the banned hard drives estimated at over $ 1.1 billion.

Upon request, the Ministry of Commerce did not want to comment on the TSMC examination. A TSMC spokeswoman again said that the chip application Huawei has not supplied since September 2020 and cooperated with the Ministry of Commerce. So far, the latter has not taken any measures against TSMC. Typically, companies that are accused of violations of export bans are informed in advance about the investigation and possible punishments so that they can react accordingly.