Huawei has built up to two years' worth of crucial American chips to shield its operations from crackdowns, the Nikkei Asian Review reported on Thursday citing sources.
Huawei's stockpiling efforts focus on central processors made by Intel for use in servers and programmable chips from its peer Xilinx, the sources said.
These are the "most essential components" for the company's base station business and emerging cloud business, and it has enough inventory to last between one and a half and two years, they added.
Following the latest US crackdown on May 15, there are no long-term alternatives for these components immediately available to Huawei, the sources said, as Washington has in effect blocked the production of Huawei-designed chips.
Analysts, moreover, say that relying on stockpiled chips could eventually hurt the company's competitiveness.
The company started buying up chips at the end of 2018, soon after Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou -- who is also founder Ren Zhengfei's daughter -- was arrested on the Canadian border, the sources said.
Huawei revealed last week that it spent 167.4 billion yuan ($23.45 billion) stockpiling chips, components and materials in 2019, up 73% from the previous year.
