Huawei's affiliate was neighbors with Nvidia in California for a decade. US lawmakers want to know why. (www.businessinsider.com)

House lawmakers have asked Huawei’s U.S. research arm, Futurewei, to hand over internal documents after revealing the affiliate held the prime lease on three buildings at 2330 Central Expressway in Santa Clara — effectively colocating on Nvidia’s campus — for about a decade until Nvidia bought the lease and took full control in 2024. In a letter, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party leaders John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi called the arrangement “deeply concerning,” saying it may have given Futurewei unusual access to advanced semiconductor and AI capabilities. The committee cited a 2018 whistleblower lawsuit (settled in 2019) alleging Futurewei used deception and consulting work to harvest sensitive information from U.S. firms and industry events. Nvidia and Futurewei have not publicly detailed the arrangement; Nvidia says it keeps its campus and IP secure, and Futurewei has since moved to San Jose. The episode matters for AI/ML because it underscores persistent supply‑chain and IP‑security risks at the intersection of hardware, software, and research collaboration. Huawei has been blacklisted since 2019 and pushed toward chip self‑sufficiency (Huawei used domestically produced chips in its Mate phones from 2023), while U.S. policy continues to restrict advanced-chip flows. For engineers, researchers and vendors, the probe could prompt tighter physical and data‑segregation practices, stricter vetting of joint work, and heightened regulatory scrutiny around cross‑border research ties that might expose model training data, design blueprints, or accelerator architectures.