April 8 (Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (2330.TW) 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 AI 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.
How is the US gonna fine a company from Taiwan?
I guess said company could always hike export prices to match the fine…
They just built a massive chip fab outside Phoenix so there’s clearly some US-based division the government has jurisdiction over.
That’s for the low-end stuff, but yeah.
They use US tech in their foundries, and thus are subject to export controls to make sure sanctioned entities (like Huawei) don’t benefit from it.