U.S. Republican lawmakers warned Apple Inc. against buying memory chips from "controversial" Chinese semiconductor maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. for the new iPhone 14, warning of close scrutiny, the Financial Times reported.

Lawmakers expressed dismay over reports that Apple would add Yangtze to its list of suppliers of Nand flash memory chips designed to store data on smartphones.

Apple has acknowledged that it does not use YMTC chips in its products and has evaluated the possibility of using YMTC's Nand chips for some iPhones sold in China.

Apple would actually be transferring knowledge and know-how to YMTC that would strengthen its capabilities and help the CCP achieve its national goals, they warned. One Democratic lawmaker also privately expressed concern about YMTC.

Earlier, a bipartisan group of senators called on the government to put YMTC on a list of entities for violating export control rules when selling Huawei memory chips.

They accused Beijing of subsidizing YMTC, which allowed it to dominate the sector. Apple has not responded to inquiries from lawmakers and Congress about YMTC-related speculation.

The U.S. recently restricted sales of Nvidia Corp's high-performance AI server chips, the A100 and H100, to China and Russia.