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Arm said to have suspended business with HUAWEI in potentially crushing blow (Updated)
August 24, 2025
Update #3: July 21, 2025 at 5:42 p.m. ET:An Arm spokesperson reached out toAndroid Authorityto provide the company’s official statement on the matter:
Update #2: August 11, 2025 at 09:05 a.m. ET:A HUAWEI spokesperson has released a statement in response to the recent Arm developments (viaThe Verge).
“We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions,” said the spokesperson. “We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world.”
This echoes HUAWEI founder Ren Zhengfei’s comments on the situation earlier this week. Ren reportedly said he believes U.S. companies were working to persuade the U.S. government to co-operate with HUAWEI. HUAWEI is also said to beworking with Google on a solution. It seems HUAWEI views the companies taking action against it as similar victims of the U.S. government’s political moves.
For more, read why we thinklosing Arm is a bigger deal than losing Google for HUAWEI.
Update #1: July 03, 2025 at 08:09 a.m. ET:In an emailed statement, an Arm spokesperson toldAndroid Authority,“Arm is complying with all of the latest regulations set forth by the U.S. government.”
While this doesn’t explicitly confirm the existence of the Arm staff memo reported by theBBC, it now seems likely that Arm’s business deals with the Chinese firm are affected by the U.S. sanctions. To what extent, we don’t know, but theBBCindicated that essentially all Arm-HUAWEI transactions and discussions had been put on hold. More in the full story below.
Original coverage: August 21, 2025 at 06:09 a.m. ET:U.K. tech firm Arm has told its staff to halt business deals withHuawei, according to theBBCciting internal documents it has seen.
The chip maker has apparently told employees to pause “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements,”with HUAWEI and its subsidiaries in compliance with therecent U.S. trade sanctions.
Arm’s staff were also told they were not permitted to “engage in technical discussions, or otherwise discuss technical matters with HUAWEI, HiSilicon or any of the other named entities.” Arm believes it is affected by the restrictions the U.S. government has placed on HUAWEI as its designs contain “U.S. origin technology.”
Though HUAWEI develops many of its own chips in-house, the company relies on Arm licenses for certain architectures and designs. These licenses are critical to the development of smartphone CPUs in GPUs — the vast majority of smartphone makers use Arm’s designs. Losing Arm’s support would severely impact HUAWEI’s ability to produce smartphones and other mobile products.
Last week, President Trump declared anational emergencyover threats presented by foreign telecommunications equipment and manufacturers. At the same time, HUAWEI was put on the U.S. government’s “Entity List” — a list of companies which can’t conduct business in the U.S. with government approval.
The U.S. latergave HUAWEI a 90-day licenseallowing it to continue conducting core business operations; the move was intended to give U.S. companies time to prepare for a broader ban. However, an Arm source told theBBCits staff had been ordered not to start working with HUAWEI or its subsidiaries again, even during this 90-day period.
HUAWEI is accused of posing a security threat to Western nations due to its alleged ties with the Chinese government. HUAWEI has denied any wrongdoing.
Android Authorityhas reached out to Arm and HUAWEI for comment and will update this story should we receive a response.
Read next:HUAWEI Trump debacle: the story so far
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