Investing.com -- Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas said on Tuesday that preventing the export of AI-capable CPUs to China would be challenging due to their widespread use, and distinguishing AI-specific CPUs from general-purpose processors would prove difficult.

Haas told Reuters that CPUs function like oil in the application space, making any export restrictions a significant undertaking. He explained that banning artificial intelligence CPUs would be nearly impossible because establishing specific performance thresholds and memory bandwidth limits for CPUs is more complex than for graphics processing units made by Nvidia.

"They would have to limit everything," Haas said, noting that while the U.S. could attempt such restrictions, CPUs are harder to control than AI chips.

The U.S. has increased efforts to restrict Chinese firms' access to advanced semiconductors and supercomputing equipment needed for AI development, citing national security concerns. Reuters reported that the U.S. has also moved to stop Nvidia AI chip shipments to Chinese companies operating outside China.

On Tuesday, Arm announced that Chinese tech company ByteDance and U.S. data center firm Oracle have become customers for the company's AGI CPU.

Haas said demand for the Arm data center CPU has strengthened compared to eight weeks ago, enabling the company to announce two large customers. Arm expects the data center chip to generate approximately $15 billion in annual revenue within five years, representing a new business line for the British company.