ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly advancing plans to produce its own artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
According to a report by The Information, ByteDance is working with TSMC to manufacture two AI chips by 2026. The decision is aimed at decreasing ByteDance’s reliance on suppliers, such as Nvidia, the leading company in the AI chip niche.
It has been said that most companies use Nvidia’s GPUs in AI development. However, the difficulty of obtaining these GPUs due to US export restrictions has forced ByteDance to look for other alternatives.
ByteDance’s interest in developing in-house AI chips can be attributed to the company’s increasing focus on AI technology, which underpins many of its offerings, including TikTok’s recommendation systems. Designing chips to meet the company’s requirements would enhance the performance, processing speed, and flexibility of AI services.
The chips being developed will be used to train and deploy the AI models, which are core components of ByteDance’s expanding AI infrastructure.
ByteDance expands AI portfolio with Doubao chatbot and enterprise LLMs
ByteDance has already come a long way in the development of artificial intelligence. In August 2022, the company introduced Doubao, an AI chatbot, which has become the main competitor to Baidu’s Ernie Bot, China’s equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Doubao has become very popular and has outperformed Ernie Bot in terms of downloads and monthly active users on iOS.
In May, ByteDance rolled out its Doubao brand large language models (LLMs) aimed at enterprise clients. These models are relatively cheap, and their prices are usually lower than those of other models that offer similar features.
ByteDance’s plan to develop its own chips is in view of the rising tensions between the U.S. and China on technology exports. At the beginning of the year, the U.S. introduced tough measures to restrict exports of key technologies, including artificial intelligence chips.
In June, Cryptopolitan reported that ByteDance has been collaborating with US-based chip maker Broadcom on a 5-nanometer application-specific integrated chip. This custom processor will meet the US export rules and will be produced by TSMC. ByteDance also acquired Huawei’s Ascend 910B chips in the last year as per the report by Reuters.
ByteDance is not the only company that is working on its own AI chips. Another Chinese technology firm, Baidu, has also designed its own AI chip called Kunlun 3 with TSMC set to start manufacturing the chip in the near future.
