Slicing corners: Huawei and Qualcomm have signed a multiyear patent cross-license masking 5G, compute, AI, and networking, the primary settlement between the 2 that extends to 5G, in accordance with Huawei. As a part of the deal, Qualcomm can even purchase a batch of Huawei-owned US patents in compute, AI, and networking. Neither firm disclosed monetary phrases, and the transaction will not shut till regulators log off.
Huawei made its first licensing fee to Qualcomm in 2001, again when it was a telecom gear maker constructing on different individuals’s wi-fi requirements. Twenty-five years later, the Chinese language big is promoting patents to Qualcomm, and Huawei says the deal pushes the cumulative worth of its licensing agreements to roughly $7 billion.
The joint announcement is brief. It confirms cross-licenses to each portfolios, the US patent buy, and a dedication to honest licensing. What we do not know: greenback figures, the deal’s period, or which patents are concerned.
Every firm revealed the identical textual content with its personal govt’s quote on prime, which says rather a lot about how in a different way they’re framing it. Qualcomm licensing chief John Han stated the deal reaffirms “the success of Qualcomm’s 5G SEP licensing program,” a nod to the standard-essential patents that drive its royalty enterprise. Huawei’s chief IP officer Alan Fan pointed as an alternative to Huawei’s personal 4G and 5G requirements work, singling out polar codes, the error-correction scheme adopted for 5G management channels, as proof of the worth of Huawei’s improvements.
Huawei added that its IP licensing enterprise has generated constructive income since 2021 and that it held greater than 165,000 lively granted patents on the finish of 2025. The Qualcomm settlement follows a licensing cope with HP that Huawei introduced in August.
Nikkei Asia is reporting that Qualcomm pays to make use of Huawei’s patents for the primary time, framing the cross-license as one which makes Qualcomm the web payer. Bloomberg, citing a Huawei spokesperson, reported that Qualcomm can also be licensing patents behind Huawei’s LogicFolding chipmaking approach. Neither declare seems within the official statements.
– Anshel Sag (@anshelsag) October 5, 2026
Trade analyst Anshel Sag pushed again on each, noting that the one confirmed funds come from Qualcomm shopping for Huawei’s US patents and that LogicFolding hadn’t been talked about wherever outdoors Bloomberg’s report. In his phrases, “The Huawei PR machine is in full swing.”
LogicFolding is Huawei’s most-hyped chip thought of the yr. Unveiled in Might, it splits a chip’s logic throughout two stacked tiers joined by hybrid bonding, shortening the longest sign paths as an alternative of shrinking transistors, a workaround for being locked out of EUV lithography. Huawei claims the approach lifted its first LogicFolding Kirin SoC’s density from roughly 155 to 238 million transistors per sq. millimeter, a 55% bounce.
The deal additionally lands whereas Huawei is on trial within the US, going through racketeering costs that embody conspiring to steal commerce secrets and techniques from US tech corporations. Huawei has pleaded not responsible. Nonetheless, the irony of a US chip big shopping for patents from an organization being prosecuted over American IP is tough to overlook.
Huawei has been on the Entity Listing since 2019, so the deal will set off a regulatory evaluation within the US. Export controls are constructed to cease know-how flowing to Huawei, not cash, however a US firm paying a blacklisted Chinese language agency for AI and compute patents is strictly the sort of transaction that invitations scrutiny.
So what’s confirmed to this point is narrower than the headlines recommend: a mutual promise to not sue, Huawei again underneath a Qualcomm 5G license, and Qualcomm shopping for an undisclosed set of Huawei patents for an undisclosed sum.
