Chinese tech giant Alibaba and rising startup Biren are redesigning their chips to bypass US sanctions, six people have told the Financial Times. The redesigns reportedly aim to reduce the chips’ performance and computing speed. “There are several ways in which [this transfer rate] can be calculated,” an unnamed senior engineer at Biren told the media outlet. Biren has started to redesign chips and hopes TSMC can produce them, according to the source. Biren also reportedly altered the transfer rate of the BR100 chip from 640 GB per second to 576 GB per second. US officials unveiled a series of new export controls on the Chinese semiconductor industry on Oct. 7. Unsure whether Biren’s chips were compliant with the new rules, TSMC suspended its partnership with the firm. A source familiar with Alibaba’s chip arm T-Head unit told the Financial Times that the team was studying how to alter its new 5nm AI chip, though they said that the process could take months and cost more than $10 million. A T-Head spokesperson told the FT: “T-Head core products are solely for Alibaba Group’s proprietary use and compliant with all relevant regulations.” [Financial Times]