Qualcomm Buys Huawei US Patents in First 5G Cross-License

Qualcomm will purchase a batch of U.S.-registered patents from Huawei covering artificial intelligence, compute, and networking technologies as part of a newly signed multiyear cross-licensing agreement. The deal marks the first time the two telecommunications giants have extended mutual patent rights to cover 5G standards, though neither company disclosed the financial terms or the specific duration of the contract.

The transaction requires regulatory approval before it can close. Because Huawei has been placed on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List since 2019, any commercial exchange between an American firm and the Chinese company triggers federal scrutiny. While export controls were primarily designed to restrict the flow of advanced technology and components to Huawei rather than block financial transactions, a U.S. semiconductor leader paying a blacklisted entity for intellectual property rights enters uncharted legal territory. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews inbound acquisitions of U.S. assets by foreign entities, may also evaluate the transfer of domestic patent ownership.

Beyond the immediate regulatory hurdles, the agreement arrives while Huawei faces an ongoing criminal trial in a Brooklyn federal court. U.S. prosecutors have charged the company with racketeering conspiracy, alleging a long-running scheme to steal trade secrets from American technology firms. Huawei has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A U.S. chipmaker purchasing intellectual property from a defendant actively prosecuted over American IP theft introduces significant reputational and legal complexity to the transaction.

Under the confirmed terms, the companies have agreed to mutual non-assertion covenants across their respective portfolios. Qualcomm regains access to Huawei’s innovations under its own standard-essential patent licensing framework, while Huawei secures rights to Qualcomm’s foundational wireless technologies. Cross-licensing agreements of this scale are standard practice in the telecommunications industry, where overlapping 5G intellectual property makes litigation mutually destructive. However, direct patent sales between heavily sanctioned rivals remain exceedingly rare.

Huawei claims the new arrangement pushes the cumulative value of its global licensing agreements to approximately $7 billion. The company reported holding more than 165,000 active granted patents at the end of 2025 and noted that its intellectual property division has generated positive revenue since 2021. This follows a separate licensing agreement Huawei announced with HP in August, signaling a broader strategy to monetize its research output as hardware sales face persistent Western restrictions.

The framing of the agreement diverges sharply between the two corporations. Qualcomm licensing chief John Han characterized the pact as validation of his company’s 5G standard-essential patent program, which generates billions in annual royalty revenue from smartphone manufacturers globally. Huawei Chief Intellectual Property Officer Alan Fan emphasized his company’s contributions to 4G and 5G standards, specifically highlighting polar codes — the error-correction coding scheme adopted for 5G control channels that Huawei championed against competing technologies during international standards debates.

Unconfirmed reports have attempted to expand the scope of the deal beyond the official statements. Nikkei Asia reported that Qualcomm would become a net payer to use Huawei’s patents for the first time. Bloomberg cited a Huawei spokesperson claiming the cross-license includes LogicFolding, Huawei’s proprietary chipmaking architecture. Industry analysts have pushed back on both assertions, noting that the only confirmed monetary transfer involves Qualcomm buying the U.S. patents and that LogicFolding had not appeared in any official documentation related to the agreement.

LogicFolding, unveiled in May, represents Huawei’s most prominent engineering workaround for being locked out of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. The technique splits a processor’s logic across two stacked tiers joined by hybrid bonding, shortening signal paths rather than shrinking transistors. Huawei claims the method increased the transistor density of its first LogicFolding Kirin system-on-chip from roughly 155 million to 238 million per square millimeter.

The relationship between the two companies traces back to 2001, when Huawei operated primarily as a telecom equipment manufacturer building hardware on third-party wireless standards and made its first licensing payment to Qualcomm. Twenty-five years later, the dynamic has inverted, with the Chinese firm selling foundational compute and AI patents to the San Diego-based chipmaker.

Both companies published identical joint text regarding the agreement, appending separate executive quotes. The transaction remains pending final regulatory sign-off from U.S. authorities.