Arm CEO says US would struggle to ban AI CPU exports to China

Arm ↗4.91% CEO Rene Haas said Tuesday at Computex in Taipei that blocking CPU exports to China would be difficult because the chips are in nearly every device.youtube
His remarks came days after the Commerce Department reaffirmed that AI chip licensing rules apply to Chinese subsidiaries worldwide, closing a loophole, according to Reuters.reuters
Arm also announced ByteDance and Oracle ↗0.41% as customers of its first in-house data center CPU, and celebrated Taiwan’s central role in its supply chain.thestar

Arm CEO Warns US Would Struggle to Ban AI CPU Chip Exports to China

Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas used his appearance at Computex 2026 in Taipei on Tuesday to weigh in on U.S. chip export controls, saying it would be difficult for Washington to effectively block exports of CPUs used in AI workloads to China — remarks that came just days after the U.S. Commerce Department moved to close a loophole in its chip restrictions.

Haas, who has previously aligned himself with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in opposing export controls, has repeatedly argued that restricting technology access forces rival ecosystems to develop independently. “If you narrow access to technology and you force other ecosystems to grow up, it’s not good,” he said in a Bloomberg interview last year. “It makes the pie smaller.” Unlike GPUs, which are the primary target of existing export controls, CPUs are more difficult to regulate because they are embedded in nearly every electronic device.bloomberg

Taiwan’s Role in the AI Supply Chain

Haas devoted much of his Computex keynote to celebrating Taiwan’s role in Arm’s history and the broader AI chip ecosystem. “ARM is nowhere without the partners of Taiwan,” he told the audience, noting that approximately 250 billion Arm-based chips have been manufactured in Taiwan — more than any other region.youtube

He highlighted specific products built within the island’s partner ecosystem, ranging from Apple MacBooks and Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses to Tesla humanoid robots and Nvidia AI racks. “100% of our ecosystem is built in Taiwan,” he said, adding that Arm’s server CPUs are entirely produced on the island.youtube

Export Controls Tighten as Haas Speaks

Haas’s comments coincide with a new Commerce Department notice issued on Sunday reaffirming that licensing requirements for advanced AI chips apply to all subsidiaries of Chinese-headquartered companies, regardless of where those subsidiaries are located. Reuters reported the guidance was meant to address a loophole that may have allowed hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to reach Chinese firms operating overseas.aljazeera

The broader policy landscape around AI chip exports has been in flux since the Trump administration partially relaxed Biden-era restrictions in January 2026, allowing exports of Nvidia H200-class chips to China under strict conditions including volume caps and end-use certifications. Congressional efforts to reimpose tighter controls continue, with several bills advancing through the House.cfr

Arm also announced during Computex that ByteDance and Oracle have joined as customers of its AGI central processing unit, the company’s first in-house data center chip.thestar