China's ByteDance Ltd. is developing its own artificial intelligence (AI) chip and is said to be in talks with Samsung Electronics on foundry (contract chip manufacturing). ByteDance Ltd. is the parent company of the video platform TikTok.
Reuters reported this on the 11th, citing multiple sources. The sources said ByteDance Ltd. is aiming to receive sample chips by the end of March. It plans to produce at least 100,000 chips designed for AI inference and gradually increase output to 350,000.
One source told Reuters that in its negotiations with Samsung Electronics, ByteDance Ltd. is also discussing access to memory chip supplies. Memory semiconductors are in "short supply" as major manufacturers focus on producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and AI infrastructure is being built out worldwide. The source added that the transaction is therefore highly attractive for ByteDance Ltd..
ByteDance Ltd., however, said through a Spokesperson that information about its in-house chip project in the report was not accurate. Samsung Electronics did not issue a separate position on the matter.
Reuters said ByteDance Ltd. has been actively hiring talent related to AI chip development since around 2022, and that the code name for the chip project is "SeedChip." ByteDance Ltd. plans to spend about 160 billion yuan (about 33.6 trillion won) this year on AI-related procurement. More than half of that will be allocated to purchasing Nvidia chips such as the H200 and developing its own chips, a source said.
In June 2024, Reuters previously reported that ByteDance Ltd. is developing advanced AI processors in partnership with the U.S. semiconductor design company Broadcom, with manufacturing to be handled by Taiwan's TSMC. Alibaba and Baidu, ByteDance Ltd.'s competitors in China, have unveiled AI chips.