ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, is pivoting its artificial intelligence (AI) development strategy by focusing on chips from Huawei Technologies, according to sources familiar with the matter. This shift comes as U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI chips, notably from Nvidia, have compelled the social media giant to seek domestic alternatives.
In response to these restrictions, ByteDance has increasingly turned to local chip suppliers for its AI needs and accelerated its efforts to develop its own technology. AI has become integral to the tech industry, with companies across various sectors, including gaming and e-commerce, integrating custom AI models to enhance their offerings.
ByteDance is reportedly planning to utilize Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip to train a large-language AI model. While the company currently employs the Ascend 910B for less demanding inference tasks, training models requires significantly more computational power and vast datasets. Consequently, the new model is expected to be less capable than ByteDance’s existing AI model, Doubao, which has already made waves in the industry.
Despite the ambitious plans, ByteDance has faced supply chain challenges, having ordered over 100,000 Ascend 910B chips this year but receiving only around 30,000 by July. This slow supply has hindered the company’s ability to set a timeline for its new AI model.
ByteDance’s current AI technologies are exemplified by the recently launched Doubao large-language model and applications like Jimeng, a text-to-video tool. Doubao has gained significant traction in China, boasting over 10 million monthly active users, making it one of the country’s most popular chatbots.
As a result of its increased emphasis on AI, ByteDance has become a major purchaser of Huawei’s AI chips and is also a significant buyer of Nvidia’s H20 AI chip, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market amidst trade restrictions. Additionally, ByteDance is Microsoft’s largest client in Asia for Nvidia chips available through cloud computing services.
Despite these developments, ByteDance’s spokesperson, Michael Hughes, has publicly denied the report regarding the development of a new AI model, stating, “The entire premise here is wrong. No new model is being developed.” Huawei, Nvidia, and Microsoft have not commented on the situation.
