ByteDance targets 25% rise in AI infrastructure spending

ByteDance has boosted planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure this year by 25% to 200 billion yuan ($29.4 billion), as memory chip costs rise and the TikTok owner ramps up its AI presence, the South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.

The Chinese tech giant increased the AI capital expenditure budget from 160 billion yuan late last year, the SCMP said, citing people familiar with the matter. ByteDance is now planning to spend a larger portion on domestic AI chips, according to the report.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the SCMP on Friday.


Beijing has urged companies to favor domestic technology as it seeks to promote local chip-making capacity amid its AI rivalry with the US and the export restrictions imposed by Washington.

ByteDance’s chatbot app Doubao — akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic PBC’s Claude and Google’s Gemini — was China’s most-downloaded AI chatbot for most of last year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.