China’s ByteDance is developing its own artificial intelligence chip and is in talks with Samsung Electronics to manufacture it, two people familiar with the matter said, as the TikTok parent moves to secure supplies of advanced processors, reports Reuters.
The company aims to receive sample chips by the end of March, the sources said. ByteDance plans to produce at least 100,000 units of the chip this year, designed primarily for AI inference tasks, according to one of the sources and a third person familiar with the plans. Production could gradually ramp up to as many as 350,000 units, one source added.
Negotiations with Samsung also include access to memory chips, which remain in short supply amid the global build-out of AI infrastructure, making a potential partnership particularly attractive, one of the sources said.
A ByteDance spokesperson said information about the company’s in-house chip project was inaccurate but did not elaborate. Samsung declined to comment.
If successful, the effort would mark a major milestone for ByteDance, which has sought for years to develop custom chips to power its growing AI workloads. The company began hiring aggressively for chip-related roles as early as 2022.
In June 2024, media reports said ByteDance was collaborating with U.S. chip designer Broadcom on an advanced AI processor, with plans to outsource manufacturing to Taiwan’s TSMC.
Globally, tech giants including Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Microsoft have developed their own AI chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia, the dominant supplier of high-end processors used in AI systems. For Chinese companies, U.S. export restrictions on advanced chips have added urgency to domestic chip development.
ByteDance has yet to release its own chip, but Chinese rivals Alibaba and Baidu are further along. Alibaba recently unveiled its Zhenwu chip for large-scale AI workloads, while Baidu’s chip unit, Kunlunxin, sells processors to external clients and is preparing for a public listing.
ByteDance’s chip initiative, codenamed “SeedChip,” is part of a broader push to expand its AI capabilities, spanning hardware, large language models and applications across short video, e-commerce and enterprise cloud services. The company established its AI research division, Seed, in 2023 to develop foundation models and related technologies.
ByteDance plans to spend more than 160 billion yuan ($22 billion) on AI-related procurement this year, with over half allocated to Nvidia chips — including H200 models — and to advancing its in-house chip project, one source said.
At a January all-hands meeting, ByteDance executive Zhao Qi told employees that AI investment would benefit all divisions, according to a person briefed on the meeting. Zhao, who oversees the company’s Doubao chatbot and its overseas version, Dola, acknowledged that ByteDance’s AI models still trail global leaders such as OpenAI but pledged sustained investment in AI development this year.
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
