ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is planning to develop a new AI model primarily using chips from Huawei Technologies, according to sources familiar with the matter. This shift comes as U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI chips, such as those from Nvidia, have pushed the company to seek domestic alternatives.
ByteDance has been accelerating its efforts to develop AI technology by partnering with local chipmakers like Huawei. The company plans to use Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip to train a large-language AI model, though sources say the model will be less powerful than ByteDance’s current flagship model, Doubao. While ByteDance has already used Huawei chips for less intensive AI tasks, training a large AI model would require far more computing power, typically provided by advanced Nvidia chips.
Despite these efforts, ByteDance has faced challenges in securing enough Huawei chips. Of the 100,000 Ascend 910B chips ordered this year, fewer than 30,000 had been delivered by July, causing delays in setting a timeline for the new AI model’s development.
ByteDance’s AI technology, including its Doubao chatbot, has rapidly grown in popularity, with more than 10 million monthly active users. The company has become one of the largest buyers of both Huawei and Nvidia’s AI chips, and is Microsoft’s largest client in Asia for Nvidia-powered cloud computing services. However, ByteDance has denied the development of a new AI model, with a spokesperson calling the premise “wrong.”
Neither Huawei nor Nvidia commented on the matter, and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.
