Apple is pressing Trump for the go-ahead to buy chips from the Chinese firm Cxmt. The ban on Mithos has been lifted

Apple is reportedly putting pressure on the Trump administration to obtain authorisation to purchase memory chips from Cxmt, a Chinese company that the Pentagon has placed on its ‘blacklist’ due to alleged links with the People’s Liberation Army. This is according to the Financial Times.

The iPhone manufacturer has therefore launched a lobbying campaign to secure the White House’s approval, with the aim of alleviating the financial pressure resulting from rising memory chip prices. Apple is not, in fact, explicitly banned from purchasing chips from CXMT or YMTG, another Chinese manufacturer. However, the Pentagon has placed both companies on the blacklist of Chinese military firms, which contains dozens of groups with alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army that undermine US national security.

Apple’s decision to raise the prices of its MacBooks and iPads, the FT notes, has caused the Cupertino-based giant to lose $263 billion in market capitalisation (the second-largest single-day fall in its history). The company attributed the decision to the ‘unsustainable’ costs of memory chips. In this context, securing chips from Cxmt would therefore help to ease the pressure on the tech giant.

Meanwhile, the US government has lifted the ban on Anthropic’s powerful artificial intelligence model, Claude Mythos 5,, allowing the company to distribute it to more than 100 US institutions, including major companies and government agencies. This is reported by the specialist website Semafor. The decision, set out in a letter sent yesterday to Anthropic, marks a significant de-escalation in the standoff between the Trump administration and one of the world’s leading private companies. The move comes on the same day that Anthropic’s main competitor, OpenAI, released its latest model, GPT-5.6, as part of a shortlist of government-approved partners.