A Chinese technology executive has emerged as a pivotal figure in her country’s quest for semiconductor independence, rising to prominence during more than two decades at one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies.
He Tingbo took control of Huawei’s semiconductor development operations in 2003, receiving a $400 million yearly budget and responsibilities that would eventually place her at the heart of China’s most significant technology initiative.
Now known within Chinese tech communities as Huawei’s “chip queen,” He has evolved into one of the corporation’s key leaders and represents China’s resolve to withstand American trade restrictions while establishing an independent semiconductor industry.
Currently serving as president of Huawei’s chip division and director of its Scientist Committee, He holds one of just two female positions on the company’s 17-person board of directors, sharing that distinction with Meng Wanzhou, who is both the founder’s daughter and the company’s rotating chairwoman.
During a Monday keynote presentation called “New Semiconductor Path in Practice” at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai, He positioned herself at the center of worldwide discussions about the future of chip development beyond traditional scaling methods.
The semiconductor industry has historically advanced by making transistors smaller and fitting more components onto individual chips, creating faster, more affordable, and energy-efficient computers through what became known as Moore’s Law. However, as chip manufacturing reaches physical and atomic boundaries, this traditional approach has lost effectiveness, compelling companies to discover alternative performance enhancement strategies.
Huawei faced this challenge sooner and more severely than many competitors when U.S. trade restrictions starting in 2019 blocked access to crucial foreign chip technologies and cutting-edge manufacturing capabilities, jeopardizing operations spanning mobile devices to telecommunications infrastructure.
Additional American restrictions later placed many of Huawei’s domestic partners and rivals in comparable situations, amplifying the significance of post-Moore’s Law semiconductor innovations.
He unveiled what Huawei terms the Tau Scaling Law during Monday’s presentation, describing it as a guiding principle for chip advancement as traditional scaling methods diminish in effectiveness.
According to Huawei, her team has dedicated six years to implementing this approach and has successfully manufactured 381 chips using these methods in large-scale production.
This principle advocates for the semiconductor sector to redirect attention from transistor miniaturization toward accelerating transmission speeds throughout devices, circuits, chips, and computing systems.
He’s professional journey has mirrored Huawei’s international expansion, its challenging period under U.S. sanctions, and subsequent revival as the central force behind China’s ambition to become a technology powerhouse.
Born in 1969 in Changsha within Hunan province, she became a Huawei engineer in 1996 following completion of dual bachelor’s degrees in semiconductor physics and communication engineering, plus a master’s degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
The company officially created HiSilicon, its chip design division, in 2004, which He helped transform from a modest internal department into one of the globe’s most comprehensive semiconductor operations.
Through her guidance, Huawei developed expertise in system-on-chip design, optoelectronics, and advanced packaging technologies.
The company’s chip portfolio eventually encompassed smartphones, artificial intelligence, general-purpose processors, telecommunications, networking, and consumer electronics, contributing substantially to Huawei’s 2025 revenue of 880.9 billion yuan ($130 billion).
Following the implementation of sanctions, He became closely linked with Huawei’s internal resilience efforts. In a 2019 letter to HiSilicon staff that gained widespread attention, she described the unit as “building a backup lifeline for Huawei and for the whole country.”
