Intel survived bid to halt millions in sales to China’s Huawei, sources say

WASHINGTON — Intel has survived an effort to halt hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of chip sales to Huawei, two people familiar with the matter said, giving one of the world’s largest chipmakers more time to sell to the heavily sanctioned Chinese telecoms company.

US President Joseph R. Biden has long been under pressure to revoke a license, issued by the Trump administration, that allows Intel to ship advanced central processors to Huawei for use in laptops.

The push came from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which argued it was unfair that it did not receive a license to sell similar chips to Huawei and from China hawks, who are seeking to stop all sales to the Chinese firm.

Intel’s ability to hang on to a license to sell chips while a rival could not obtain similar permission demonstrates the uneven and uncertain terrain companies face as the US seeks to limit Beijing’s access to sophisticated American technology, especially to a heavily sanctioned company like Huawei.

It has also allowed Huawei to keep a small but growing share of the global laptop market, while AMD was deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of sales to the Chinese sanctioned firm, data showed.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio called on the Biden administration to revoke Intel’s license to sell to Huawei “immediately” following the Reuters report.

“No American company, especially those receiving taxpayer funding, should be fueling its innovation,” he said, referencing Intel’s expected grant from the Commerce department to expand its US chip production.

Intel, Huawei, the Commerce department, and the White House declined to comment. AMD did not respond to a request for comment. Describing the curbs on Huawei as economic bullying, the Chinese Embassy in Washington urged the United States to “stop overstretching the concept of national security” to “suppress Chinese companies.”

Huawei, a symbol of the yearslong technology war between Washington and Beijing, was added to the trade restriction list by the Trump administration in 2019 over alleged sanctions violations. Huawei has previously denied wrongdoing.

Being added to that list usually bars US suppliers from selling anything to the targeted company.

But in late 2020, just before former President Donald Trump left office, the Commerce department granted some US Huawei suppliers — including Intel — special permission to sell certain items to the telecoms equipment giant.

AMD applied for a license to sell similar chips in early 2021 after Mr. Biden took office but never received a response to its application, a source said.

Reuters could not determine why Intel was granted its license and AMD was not. But the impact on CPU chip sales to Huawei was immediate, with the share of sales of Huawei laptops containing AMD chips plunging from 47.1% in 2020 to 9.3% in the first half of 2023, an internal AMD presentation with data sourced to NPD and GfK showed.

Intel’s share of sales of Huawei laptops containing its chips soared during the period from 52.9% to 90.7%, according to the presentation.