ByteDance plans $14 billion Nvidia AI GPU purchase as Trump eases chip export controls to China

TikTok owner ByteDance to reportedly purchase $14 billion worth of Nvidia AI GPUs in 2026 -- Company betting on Beijing's approval following Trump admin's ease on AI export controls

Chinese tech firm ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly planning to spend 100 billion yuan on Nvidia's H200 AI GPUs in 2026, which translates to around $14 billion USD. This planned purchase is set to add to the growing stockpile of Nvidia GPUs the company already owns. Despite numerous setbacks, ByteDance spent 85 billion yuan on Nvidia chips throughout 2025, marking a significant increase for next year, South China Morning Post reports. ByteDance is one of the biggest local tech players in the region, rivaling Tencent when it comes to AI operations. It was recently evaluated at a market cap of $500 billion, so this spending is part of its massive AI budget for 2026. China is barred from receiving Nvidia's current-gen Blackwell products, but the Trump administration recently allowed the Hopper-based H200 GPUs to be sold to Beijing. Following this, the Chinese government even held meetings with its tech companies, including ByteDance, to carefully assess their inventory demands to permit these transactions. The situation is complex, as China itself doesn't allow foreign silicon in its data centers, and the country is pushing to achieve technological self-reliance. Companies across the board are gunning to replace Western solutions with homegrown substitutes. ByteDance is part of that race, developing two custom AI GPUs with Broadcom and TSMC, which are believed to debut in 2026. Around a year ago, ByteDance started renting cloud compute from other countries to evade U.S. sanctions that would prevent it from building servers within China. TikTok, the company's flagship IP, is essentially a massive inference engine with powerful AI needed for everything from curating algorithms (via TikTok's 'For You' page) to running ads and moderating content. The company's own GPUs are conspicuously missing from the conversation. One would imagine that if mass production was originally planned for 2026, ByteDance wouldn't need to go so hard on its Nvidia investment, but Nvidia's GPUs are critical for AI training workloads, while its homegrown chips may be used for inference. Therefore, even though custom silicon is purportedly being developed by the company for next year, ByteDance still needs chips for training; after all, it runs Doubao -- the most popular AI chatbot in China.

ByteDance to spend about $14 billion in Nvidia chips in 2026, SCMP reports

Dec 31 (Reuters) - ByteDance plans to spend about 100 billion yuan ($14.29 billion) on artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab in 2026, a hefty increase from roughly 85 billion yuan in 2025, if the U.S. company is allowed to sell its H200 graphic processing units in China, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. ($1 = 6.9961 Chinese yuan renminbi) Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab