Huawei and Qualcomm Strike a Patent Deal Covering 5G and AI
The two companies agreed to cross-license patents across 5G, computing and artificial intelligence — and Qualcomm will buy some of Huawei’s U.S. patents outright.
Huawei and Qualcomm agreed on Monday to a broad, multi-year patent licensing deal covering 5G, computing, artificial intelligence and networking. It includes cross-licenses to both companies' patent portfolios. Qualcomm will also buy certain Huawei patents issued in the United States.
Huawei said it is the company's first patent-licensing agreement with Qualcomm that covers 5G technology. It is also the first under which Huawei licenses and assigns patents in compute, AI and networking to the American chip designer. The deal will close once regulators approve it. Neither side disclosed the financial terms.
The money involved is significant. Huawei said the deal is expected to push the total expected contract value of its patent licensing agreements past $6.9 billion. The company said its intellectual property business has generated positive revenue since 2021, after years of heavy spending on research and development.
In the joint announcement, Alan Fan, Huawei's chief intellectual property officer, said the agreement “demonstrates the value of Huawei's innovations.” John Han, executive vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's licensing business, said it “reaffirms industry recognition of Qualcomm's 5G technology leadership.”
The two companies have a long, uneven history. Huawei made its first licensing payment to Qualcomm in 2001. It earned its first licensing revenue a decade later, from Motorola. The new deal follows a licensing agreement Huawei announced with HP in August covering patents used in Wi-Fi. It also comes after the previous Huawei-Qualcomm license expired: Qualcomm said in its fiscal 2025 annual report that licensing revenue from the second quarter of the year onward no longer included royalties from Huawei.
U.S. trade restrictions since 2019 have limited Huawei's ability to buy advanced chips and crucial software, which is why the company leaned into licensing revenue. In May 2024, the Commerce Department revoked Qualcomm's export license covering 4G and certain other chips for Huawei. A patent truce does not change any of that: the export controls stay in place, and Qualcomm still cannot sell Huawei its most advanced chips.
