By Karen Freifeld
(Reuters) – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company notified the U.S. a couple of weeks ago that one of its chips had been found in a Huawei device after a teardown by the tech research firm TechInsights, according to a person familiar with the matter.
TechInsights informed TSMC about the chip in advance of publishing its findings in a report, the person said, and the chip company notified the U.S. Department of Commerce.
TSMC said in a statement on Monday that it had proactively communicated with the Commerce Department regarding the matter. It said it had not supplied chips to Huawei since mid-September 2020.
“We are not aware of TSMC being the subject of any investigation at this time,” the company said.
The chip’s existence in a Huawei device is in apparent violation of export controls on China’s Huawei, which was placed on a U.S. trade restriction list in 2019 for national security purposes.
TechInsights declined to comment.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; editing by Chris Sanders and Chizu Nomiyama)
