Bloomberg reported on the 26th (local time) that Qualcomm has agreed to supply application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers to the TikTok operator ByteDance Ltd. Observers said this could be a chance for Qualcomm, which has strength in application processors (APs) for smartphones, to widen its step into the AI infrastructure semiconductor market.
Citing sources, Bloomberg said ByteDance Ltd. plans to purchase millions of ASICs from Qualcomm. The chips are reportedly set to be used to run AI agent software. Immediately after the report, Qualcomm shares rose more than 8% intraday.
The deal came amid U.S. export controls on AI Semiconductor to China. If Qualcomm's chips do not exceed the computing performance thresholds allowed under U.S. regulations, supplying them to ByteDance Ltd. via contract manufacturers such as TSMC may not violate current rules. It appears the companies have established an export route by tuning performance to the "Computing Threshold" approval standard defined by U.S. law and mass-supplying purpose-built ASICs.
Qualcomm has maintained a mobile chip-centered business structure, but recently has pushed to develop central processing units (CPUs) for data centers, inference accelerators, and custom ASICs. Industry watchers said such business expansion by Qualcomm could be a positive factor for Korea's memory semiconductor industry. That is because increased investment in ASIC-based AI infrastructure could be tied to expanded demand for high-performance memory such as high bandwidth memory (HBM).
ByteDance Ltd. operates the "Doubao" AI chatbot in China and has set this year's AI infrastructure budget at 200 billion yuan (about 44.6 trillion won), up 25% from a year earlier.