Amazon and Apple have refuted claims that Chinese microchips were used to steal data from them.

Bloomberg had reported that Chinese chips were used to infiltrate the networks of the tech giants, along with a host of other American organisations.

Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek report suggested that Apple and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centre equipment had been subject to surveillance from the Chinese Government via microchips inserted during the equipment manufacturing process.

The US Government has been investigating the alleged spying since 2015, Bloomberg stated. It added that the chips were used to gather intellectual property and trade secrets from American firms and could have been introduced by Chinese server company, Super Micro, which assembled machines used in the data centres.

However, Apple said it had not found the chips as Bloomberg had claimed. Super Micro has also denied that it introduced the chips during the manufacturing.

An Apple spokesperson said: “We are deeply disappointed that in their dealings with us, Bloomberg’s reporters have not been open to the possibility that they or their sources might be wrong or misinformed.

“Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple.”

An AWS statement read: “As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, at no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems.‎”