ByteDance is reportedly developing an AI chip. This will position the parent company of the popular short-video app TikTok to compete with Nvidia in the AI-processor market. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, the Chinese tech giant has entered talks with Samsung Electronics to manufacture the AI chip. The partnership comes as ByteDance seeks to secure its own supply of advanced chips amid Nvidia’s dominance of over 90% of the specialised AI chip market.The Reuters report, citing people familiar with the matter, said ByteDance aims to receive sample chips by the end of March and plans to produce at least 100,000 units this year, with the potential to scale up to 350,000 units.
According to a source cited by Reuters, the Samsung deal is especially valuable because it will allow ByteDance to access memory chips that are in short supply globally as AI infrastructure expands. ByteDance’s action is part of a larger trend in which tech companies are creating custom chips to lessen their reliance on Nvidia, whose GPUs are now the industry standard for AI inference and training.However, in a statement to Reuters, a ByteDance spokesperson said that the information about the in-house chip project is inaccurate without elaborating. The work would represent a significant development for ByteDance, which has sought to develop chips to support its AI workloads.
What do we know about ByteDance’s chip-making efforts so far
ByteDance’s chip efforts date back to at least 2022, when it began hiring chip-related staff. In June 2024, ByteDance started working with US chip designer Broadcom on an AI processor, with manufacturing planned to be outsourced to Taiwan’s TSMC, Reuters previously reported.Code-named SeedChip, the chip project is a part of ByteDance’s larger effort to invest in AI development, from chips to large language models, with the hope that the technology will revolutionise its business portfolio, which includes enterprise cloud services, e-commerce, and short video. In 2023, the business established Seed to create AI models and market its applications.ByteDance plans to spend over 160 billion yuan ($22 billion) on AI-related procurement this year, with more than half allocated to purchasing Nvidia chips, including H200 models, and to developing its in-house chip, according to a report citing a source.ByteDance executive Zhao Qi told employees at a January all-hands meeting that the company’s AI investment would benefit all divisions, according to a fourth source briefed on the meeting.Zhao, who oversees ByteDance’s Doubao chatbot and its overseas version, Dola, acknowledged the company’s AI models trailed behind major players like OpenAI but pledged continued support for AI development this year, the person said.Beyond ByteDance, global tech companies, including Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have developed their own AI chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia, the primary supplier of specialised chips for AI development.For Chinese tech companies, US export controls on chip sales to China have increased the need to develop their own AI chips. While ByteDance has yet to launch its own chip, its rivals, Alibaba and Baidu, are further along in AI chip development: Alibaba unveiled its Zhenwu chip last month for large-scale AI workloads. Baidu sells chips to external clients and plans to list its chip unit Kunlunxin soon.
