The United States has added six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China’s leading cloud computing and big data service provider, and dozens of other Chinese entities to its export restriction list.
The Commerce Department stated that the Inspur units were listed for contributing to the development of supercomputers for the Chinese military. Five of the subsidiaries are based in China and one in Taiwan. Inspur Group itself was placed on the list in 2023.
The Inspur units are among approximately 80 companies and institutes added to the export control list on Tuesday. Over 50 are based in China, while others are in Taiwan, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.
The listings aim to restrict China’s ability to develop high-performance computing capabilities, quantum technologies, and advanced AI, and to impede Beijing’s development of its hypersonic weapons program.
“We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy in Washington stated on Tuesday that it “firmly oppose these acts taken by the US and demand that it immediately stop using military-related issues as pretexts to politicize, instrumentalize and weaponize trade and tech issues.”
It is important to note that the U.S. adds companies to the Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security or foreign policy concerns, preventing them from selling goods to those listed without obtaining licenses, which are likely to be denied.
Commerce official Jeffrey Kessler stated that the administration aims to prevent “U.S. technologies and goods from being misused for high-performance computing, hypersonic missiles, military aircraft training, and UAVs [drones] that threaten our national security.”
Inspur Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia declined to comment, and AMD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chinese firms Nettrix Information Industry Co., Suma Technology Co., and Suma-USI Electronics are among the other companies added to the list.
The U.S. stated they were added to assist in developing Chinese exascale supercomputers, which can process vast amounts of data at high speeds and conduct large-scale simulations.
The companies also provided manufacturing capabilities to Sugon, also known as Dawning Information Industry Co., a computer server manufacturer added to the Entity List in 2019 for building supercomputers used by the military, the Commerce Department stated.
The companies could not immediately be reached for comment.
Other companies were added to the list for acquiring U.S.-origin items to advance China’s quantum technology capabilities, and for selling products to companies that supply other listed parties, including Huawei, the tech conglomerate seen as central to China’s AI ambitions.
