Huawei is boosting its 2020 investment on research and development to $20 billion as it prepares for a significantly increased demand for network infrastructure and services. Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of the global juggernaut, told The Wall Street Journal the company will spend an additional $5.8 billion on research and development activities this year.

With the coronavirus outbreak effectively bringing more than one-third of the world’s population to a standstill, Huawei is eyeing opportunities for growth once the pandemic ends. The spike in investment represents nearly a 41% increase from Huawei’s previous guidance for the year.

Ren declined to share how much COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, will impact Huawei’s financial performance this year, but he claims relatively little production time was lost during China’s period of lockdown. He did, however, admit that the pandemic will likely take a toll on this year’s financial results and the company has lowered its targets as a result.

The company already faces a barrage of threats that have nothing to do with the pandemic. The U.S. government and some of its allies have waged a widening campaign to cripple the world’s largest telecommunications equipment vendor to mixed results.

Federal prosecutors last month filed new charges against the company, accusing it of espionage and conspiring to steal trade secrets. Less than a week later, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Huawei that challenged the constitutionality of a law that bans the U.S. government, its contractors, and suppliers from purchasing the Chinese vendor’s equipment and services.

Huawei has also been hit with a trade ban that prohibits it from selling to or buying components from American companies, following a presidential executive order. An oversight board in the United Kingdom discovered significant security vulnerabilities in its software, and Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng remains under house arrest in Canada after the Justice Department accused her of violating sanctions on Iran.

Many of these issues spilled over into a heated debate during a panel at last month’s RSA Conference. In a separate interview with SDxCentral during the event, Huawei USA CSO Andy Purdy admitted that the company has “had some bumps in the road.” 

However, he added that “Huawei is going to be more successful in two or three years than we would have been if we hadn’t been forced to break from buying from American companies. The American companies are going to be hurt as a result.”

Huawei’s significant increase in research and development spending this year will likely bolster that effort. Meanwhile and despite the many challenges it’s facing, Huawei’s business has continued to grow. The company beat its revenue projections for 2019 by 22%, ending the year with $122 billion in revenue. The company reported $107 billion in revenue in 2018.

“That simply proves the trust, the kind of trust that our customers place in Huawei — the kind of trust that has not been affected by the U.S. campaign against Huawei,” Ren told The Wall Street Journal. 

He also said the majority of Huawei’s 150,000 China-based employees are back to work, following work stoppage orders, and some operations resumed in early February. Like other global vendors that rely heavily on a strained supply chain, Ren is projecting confidence and planning for a surge in network infrastructure demand.

He told The Wall Street Journal that an acceleration in network deployments is a possibility after the pandemic is over, but he’s also concerned Huawei may not have enough capacity to meet that demand.