TikTok's parent company accelerates to become an AI behemoth

© ByteDance

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is aiming to become an artificial intelligence (AI) giant. To achieve this, it is rushing to buy Nvidia processors, despite the heavy US sanctions on China.

Nvidia’s largest customer

A survey by the Financial Times reveals that the company has become Nvidia’s largest customer in China. According to a source cited by the media, no other Asian industrial player makes as many purchases of chips from the American manufacturer. But White House restrictions prevent it from marketing its best products in the Middle Kingdom, so ByteDance falls back on the H20, AI processors specifically restricted for the Chinese market.

ByteDance, of course, has more than one string to its bow. It is seeking to circumvent sanctions to gain access to the precious sesame: Nvidia’s super-powerful H100 and Blackwell chips, which provide advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. For example, the Chinese company intends to increase its computing capacity outside China, including plans for new data centers in Malaysia. Led by its co-founder Zhang Yiming, it is investing billions in AI infrastructure.

Nvidia Gb200 Grace Blackwell Superchip © Nvidia

Doubts about TikTok persist

This pivot to AI is no accident. ByteDance is facing a slowdown in the activities of TikTok and Douyin (its Chinese equivalent), after a growth that exploded for several years. In addition, the possible ban of the social network in the United States sows doubt, a law requiring its sale to an American entity under penalty of ban.

This also involves the acquisition of talent. The Beijing-based company has not hesitated to poach some of the best engineers and researchers in AI, who worked at the e-commerce giant Alibaba, as well as in startups such as 01.ai and Zhipu.

© solenfeyissa/Pixabay

ByteDance wants to develop its own accelerators

ByteDance developed China’s most popular AI app, chatbot Doubao. It has 60 million regular monthly active mobile users, compared with nearly 13 million for Wenxiaoyan, the technology of Baidu, China’s equivalent of Google.

But that’s just the beginning. As it seeks to develop ever more advanced models, the company is also looking to create its own AI accelerators. To do this, it is inspired by Google's Tensor Processing Unit, which should allow it to no longer depend on Nvidia, both for the training and inference of its AI.

• ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has become Nvidia's largest customer in China, and potentially in all of Asia.
• The company aims to become an AI behemoth. In addition to infrastructure, it is also investing in talent.
• Its aspirations come as its social media business faces a slowdown, while the specter of TikTok being banned in the United States continues to loom.

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