Optica Cuts Ties With Huawei After Secret Funding Exposed

  • Bloomberg reported Huawei was secretly backing research
  • DC-based Optica will return funds for 2024 and two prior years

The Optica headquarters in Washington, DC.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg
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The Optica Foundation will no longer accept money from Huawei Technologies Co. for a competition to fund cutting edge-research at US universities, the group’s chief executive officer said, after Bloomberg News reported the Chinese company was secretly funding the program.

Huawei’s funding “has diverted attention from the program’s mission to support early career professionals focused on our field of optics and photonics,” CEO Elizabeth Rogan wrote in the letter to the Optica Board of Directors. “Huawei will have no connection to the program moving forward.”