ByteDance Ltd., the parent company of Chinese video platform TikTok, is said to be planning to invest about 34 trillion won next year to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and is showing a willingness to purchase large quantities of Nvidia's high-performance AI chips. Depending on whether the United States eases export controls, the investment could expand further.
The Financial Times (FT) reported on the 23rd, citing multiple sources, that ByteDance Ltd. set next year's AI-related capital expenditure budget at 160 billion yuan, about 33.8 trillion won. That is up from this year's AI investment of 150 billion yuan, about 31.7 trillion won.
However, FT said the amount is relatively small compared with U.S. big tech corporations such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, which have poured at least $300 billion, about 445 trillion won, into the data center race.
According to the sources, ByteDance Ltd. plans to use about half of next year's capital expenditure to secure advanced semiconductors needed to develop AI models and applications. In particular, even with access to Nvidia's AI chips uncertain, the company is said to be planning expenditure of 85 billion yuan, about 17.9 trillion won, on AI processors.
Chinese technology corporations are also showing a willingness to place large orders for Nvidia's advanced AI chip "H200." The H200 is the highest-performance chip among products based on the Hopper architecture; while its performance is lower than the latest Blackwell-based products, it is about twice as powerful as the lower-spec H20 chip, which is allowed for export to China.
ByteDance Ltd. is reportedly considering purchasing 20,000 H200 units at about $20,000 each as a trial order. Some say that if it can secure H200s without restriction, it could sharply increase next year's capital expenditure.
Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump said on the 8th that he would allow exports of the H200 to China on the condition of a 25% fee, but Nvidia's planned exports to China in February remain subject to approval by Chinese authorities.
ByteDance Ltd. is also spending billions of dollars on leasing overseas data centers as a way to legally access Nvidia's advanced chips. This is classified as operating expenses, not capital expenditure.
FT assessed that ByteDance Ltd.'s AI model "Doubao" lags competitor models such as Alibaba's or DeepSeek's in performance but shows strong competitiveness in consumer-facing AI applications.