Microsoft has been accused of asking hundreds of employees in China to consider transferring outside of the country amid growing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The US tech giant is asking about 700 to 800 people in its China-based cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence operations if they want to transfer to the US, Ireland, Australian and New Zealand, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The move by Microsoft, which is a major investor in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, comes a day after White House ramped up tensions with Beijing by imposing tariffs on $18bn of imports from the world’s second largest economy.

The Biden administration is seeking tighter restrictions on China’s capability to develop AI and is considering creating rules which would require companies like Microsoft to have a licence before giving access to AI chips to customers from the country.

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