Tech war: US seeks help of allies Japan and Netherlands to curb China’s AI chip progress

US Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said to seek more limits on the activities of ASML and Tokyo Electron in China

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The United States aims to limit mainland China’s ability to produce high-bandwidth memory chips, which are an indispensable part of the artificial intelligence hardware ecosystem. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 3:26pm, 19 Jun 2024Updated: 5:29pm, 19 Jun 2024

A senior American official is set to visit Japan and the Netherlands to ask the two countries to add fresh restrictions on China’s semiconductor sector, including on its ability to make the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development.

US Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez will press his counterparts in Tokyo and The Hague to put more limits on the activities in mainland China of Dutch supplier ASML Holding and Japan’s Tokyo Electron, according to people familiar with the matter.

Those requests, part of an ongoing dialogue with US allies, will highlight Chinese semiconductor factories developing HBM chips, said the people, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.

ASML and Tokyo Electron machines are used to produce dynamic random access memory dies, which are stacked together to make HBM chips.

The United States’ Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, Alan Estevez, oversees the country’s export controls. Photo: Getty Images

Chinese companies working on HBM chips include Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, a subsidiary of the mainland’s leading memory chip maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp, according to domestic corporate data provider Qichacha. Huawei Technologies and ChangXin Memory Technologies are also reportedly developing HBM.