According to a June 16 exclusive report by Reuters citing two sources, the Trump administration has paused adding DeepSeek, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), and over 100 other Chinese companies deemed a national security risk to the Commerce Department’s “Entity List” in order to avoid escalating tensions with China. All of the above companies had already been approved for inclusion on the list by an inter-agency committee, and Reuters has also revealed for the first time the size of this vast “pending” queue. The United States has not added any new companies to the Entity List since October 2025 — according to experts, the longest period without an update in over a decade. Once the Entity List takes effect, U.S. companies must apply for a license to export goods, software, or technology to the listed companies, and approval odds are extremely low.
As for DeepSeek, senior U.S. State Department officials previously told Reuters that the company has been found to support Chinese military and intelligence operations; Anthropic also publicly stated this year that it had discovered DeepSeek and two other Chinese AI institutions trying to extract capabilities from its models through illegal means; OpenAI has also warned members of Congress. As for CXMT, the company had previously been designated by the Department of Defense as a Chinese military company, and the Commerce Department had been considering adding it to the Entity List for over a year. This report comes less than 24 hours after the disclosure that DeepSeek had raised over $7.4 billion in its first round of financing, and at a sensitive moment when U.S.-China trade talks are stabilizing, suggesting that the Trump administration is seeking a balance between security concerns over AI/chips and maintaining a détente with China.