Geopolitical tensions and a world where state interventions are driven by national security and ideology present novel challenges for emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). Often, individual companies are targeted, and their corporate growth gets curbed. These phenomena are derived from non-market factors, which are generally absent in the springboard view of the international business discourse that explains the foreign expansion of EMNEs by viewing these firms as ambidextrous organisations capable of handling conflicting requirements. This research aims to understand the international expansion of EMNEs under geopolitical tensions by incorporating non-market factors into the ambidexterity model to enrich the springboard view. A case study of Huawei and its exclusion from the telecommunications industry in Sweden forms the empirical base of this research. The contributions are twofold. First, within the springboard view, the ambidexterity model can be upgraded by incorporating non-market factors that better explain the international expansion of EMNEs in changing geopolitical and business contexts. Second, the research highlights the management of EMNEs' subsidiaries while considering geopolitical tensions. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd