The U.S. has revoked certain licenses for chip exports to Chinese tech giant Huawei, the Commerce Department told CNBC on Tuesday, in its latest efforts to curb China’s tech power.

“We continuously assess how our controls can best protect our national security and foreign policy interests, taking into consideration a constantly changing threat environment and technological landscape,” a Commerce spokesperson said in a statement.

“As part of this process, as we have done in the past, we sometimes revoke export licenses,”  the spokesperson said, declining to comment on specific licenses. “But we can confirm that we have revoked certain licenses for exports to Huawei.”

Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, which banned U.S. firms from selling technology – including 5G chips – to the Chinese tech giant over national security concerns. In 2020, the U.S. tightened chip restrictions on Huawei, requiring foreign manufacturers using American chipmaking equipment to obtain a license before they can sell semiconductors to Huawei.

Huawei’s consumer business, which includes smartphones and laptops, is seeing a resurgence after launching the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in August.

A TechInsights analysis of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone revealed an advanced chip made by China’s top chip maker, SMIC. The smartphone is also said to be equipped with 5G connectivity – a feature which U.S. sanctions had sought to block.

U.S. chip firms Qualcomm and Intel are two of the companies that supply chips to Huawei. Qualcomm in an SEC filing earlier this month said it expects operations to be “further impacted” from its customers, such as Huawei, developing their own chips.

“While we have continued to sell integrated circuit products to Huawei under our licenses, we do not expect to receive product revenues from Huawei beyond the current calendar year,” Qualcomm said.

“Additionally, to the extent that Huawei’s 5G devices take share from Chinese original equipment manufacturers that utilize our 5G products or from non-Chinese OEMs that utilize our 5G products in devices they sell into China, our revenues, results of operations and cash flows could be further impacted,” Qualcomm said.

Last month, Huawei launched a fresh lineup of phones – the Pura 70 series – in a bid to challenge Apple in China.

Apple is facing pressure from Huawei in China as iPhone sales plunged 19.1% in the first quarter while Huawei’s smartphone sales soared 69.7%, according to Counterpoint Research.

Huawei’s net profit in 2023 grew by 144.5% from a year ago to 87 billion yuan (about $12 billion) partially helped by the sales of Mate 60 Pro in China, the firm revealed in March.

BEIJING — ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence is speeding up research and bringing humanoid robots closer to reality in China, home to many of the world’s factories.

AI has been around for decades. What’s changed with the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is the ability of AI to better understand and generate content in a human-like way. While the U.S.-based tech is not officially available in China, local companies such as Baidu have released similar chatbots and AI models.

In robotics, the development of generative AI can help machines with understanding and perceiving their environment, said Li Zhang, chief operating officer of Shenzhen-based LimX Dynamics.

About three months after joining the two-year-old startup, Li said he shortened his expectations for how long it would take LimX to produce a humanoid robot capable of not just factory work, but also helping out in a households.

Li originally expected the entire process to take eight to ten years, but now anticipates some use cases will be ready in five to seven years. “After working for a few months, I saw how various tools’ abilities were improved because of AI,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

“It has accelerated our entire research and development cycle,” he said.

Companies are rushing into the opportunity. OpenAI itself is backing humanoid robot startups, while Elon Musk’s Tesla is developing its own, called Optimus.

Electric car giant BYD last year invested in Shanghai-based Agibot just months after its founding, according to PitchBook.

And at a high level, Chinese state media in November published a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping watching a humanoid robot at an exhibition center during his first trip to Shanghai since the pandemic. The robot was developed by Fourier Intelligence.

Before humanoid robots reach households, as LimX ultimately intends, factories can be a lucrative, enclosed scenario in which to deploy them.

China surpassed Japan in 2013 as the world’s largest installer of industrial robots, and now accounts for more than 50% of the global total, according to Stanford’s latest AI Index report.

Electronics, automotive and metal and machinery were the three leading sectors for industrial robot installation in China, the report said.

The company published a paper in Nature in March claiming to have reached phase 2 clinical trials for an AI-generated drug.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pressing Tesla for answers about changes the company made to its Autopilot driver assistance system following a voluntary software recall in December that affected about 2 million vehicles in the U.S.

Tesla must meet a deadline of July 1 to provide information to the regulator or face fines up to $135.8 million, according to a letter sent by the NHTSA to company on May 6.

The recall was intended to improve Tesla’s driver-engagement systems, which are used to monitor whether drivers are safely using features like traffic aware cruise control, lane keeping and auto steering — part of Autopilot. Since the recall, at least 20 Tesla vehicles have been involved in crashes in which the system was thought to be in use, according to a filing on the NHTSA’s website.

The “recall remedy” probe follows a three-year investigation by the agency that found safety issues with Tesla Autopilot contributed to at least 467 collisions and 14 deaths from January 2018 through August 2023.

The NHTSA had concluded that drivers involved in those crashes “were not sufficiently engaged in the driving task and that the warnings provided by Autopilot when Autosteer was engaged did not adequately ensure that drivers maintained their attention on the driving task.”

Driver-engagement systems, sometimes known as driver-monitoring systems, in Tesla vehicles include torque sensors in the steering wheel to detect whether drivers are keeping their hands on the wheel, and in-cabin cameras that monitor a driver’s gaze. They should alert any inattentive driver to pay attention and stay ready to steer or brake at any time.

The NHTSA is seeking detailed crash data from the electric vehicle maker since the agency issued the recall update on Autopilot, including data and video stored in or streamed from its cars and retained by the company.

They’re also asking for records about Tesla’s engineering teams and their approach to “safety defect determination decision making,” “issue investigation,” “action design including human factors considerations (initial and modifications),” and “testing.”

Tesla is in the middle of a massive reorganization and sweeping layoffs. The company hasn’t disclosed how many jobs in its Autopilot and vehicle-safety engineering teams may have been cut.

For about a decade, CEO Elon Musk has been promising that Tesla is on the cusp of a self-driving breakthrough. With sales of Tesla EVs dropping in the first quarter, Musk has been focusing investors’ attention on his dream of a future full of Tesla artificial intelligence products, including robotaxis and “sentient” humanoid robots that can do factory work.

Tesla shares fell 3.8% on Tuesday to $177.81 and are down 28% year to date.