Arm Holdings Chief Says US Would Struggle to Ban AI CPU Exports to China, Unveils ByteDance, Oracle Deals

Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas said on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, that blocking exports of AI-capable CPUs to China would be nearly impossible due to their widespread use, even as the chip designer announced ByteDance and Oracle as new customers for its data center processors. "CPUs are kind of like oil relative to the application space. That's a pretty hardcore cut," Haas told Reuters. He argued a ban would require limiting virtually all chips because, unlike Nvidia's GPUs, establishing performance thresholds for AI CPUs is impractical. The comments come as the U.S. tightens semiconductor controls on China over national security concerns. Arm expects its data center CPU to generate about $15 billion in annual revenue within roughly five years. In May, the company doubled its fiscal 2027-2028 demand guidance to $2 billion, citing stronger-than-expected orders. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have also seen demand surge from AI agent applications.