TikTok's ByteDance to develop advance AI chips with Samsung

TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is collaborating with one of the leading tech giants, Samsung Electronics, to develop artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

As per sources, tech observers informed that China's ByteDance was recently in talks with Samsung Electronics to manufacture AI chips as it seeks to secure supply of advanced processors.

As reported, ByteDance aims to receive sample chips by the end of March 2026, and the company plans to produce at least 100,000 units of the chip, designed for AI inference tasks, this year.

According to sources, ByteDance is looking to progressively ramp production up to 350,000 units.

Negotiations with Samsung include access to memory chip supplies that are in exceptionally short supply amid the global AI infrastructure build-out, making the deal particularly attractive.

Moreover, the information about ByteDance's in-house chip project is yet to be verified from both companies.

However, this collaborative work would mark a milestone for ByteDance, which has long sought to develop chips to support its AI workloads.

Why it matters?

The company's chip efforts date back to at least 2022, when it began hiring chip-related staff in earnest.

Reuters previously reported in June 2024 that ByteDance was working with U.S. chip designer Broadcom on an advanced AI processor, with manufacturing planned to be outsourced to Taiwan's TSMC.

Global tech giants, including Alphabet's Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have developed their own AI chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia, the dominant supplier of advanced chips essential for AI development.

For Chinese tech companies, U.S. export controls on advanced chip sales to China have also added urgency to develop their own AI chips.

While ByteDance has yet to launch its own chip, its rivals Alibaba and Baidu are already ahead in AI chip development.

Alibaba last month unveiled its Zhenwu chip for large-scale AI workloads. Baidu sells chips to external clients and plans to list its chip unit Kunlunxin soon.

The chip project, codenamed SeedChip, is part of ByteDance's broader push to channel resources into AI development, from chips to large language models, betting the technology will transform its business portfolio spanning short video, e-commerce, and enterprise cloud services.

The company founded Seed in 2023 to develop AI models and promote their 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 advancing its in-house chip, one of the sources said.

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 lagged behind global leaders like OpenAI but pledged continued support for AI development this year, the person said.