Tech war: Trump’s new chip policy puts spotlight on Huawei’s secretive Ascend AI chips

New guidelines under US President Donald Trump, which define the use of Huawei Technologies’ Ascend chips “anywhere in the world” as a violation of US export controls, have put a spotlight on the secretive products developed by the Chinese tech giant.

Huawei, a key player in China’s tech rivalry with the US, did not immediately respond to the new guidelines from the US Commerce Department, which explicitly singled out its Ascend chips after scrapping the Biden administration’s country-tiered “AI diffusion” rule.

The Shenzhen-based company has kept details of its AI chips close to its chest, with the only public information coming from third-party teardown reports.

Huawei’s significance in China’s AI sector stems from its ability to produce advanced chips that rival Nvidia’s in performance, thereby cutting the country’s reliance on imports to develop AI models such as those from local start-up DeepSeek.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this month that Huawei was “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world”, and that China was “not behind” in AI.

Washington’s new guidelines are essentially forcing global tech firms to pick a side – Chinese or US hardware – which will further deepen the tech divide between the world’s two largest economies, analysts said.