New Delhi: ByteDance, which is the $500 billion parent company of TikTok, is reported to be preparing a massive 100 billion yuan, $14.29 billion budget for Nvidia AI chips in 2026. The planned expenditure represents a significant jump from the 85 billion yuan spent in 2025. This comes as the US has approved the sale of its H200 chips to China. ByteDance is stated to be specifically targeting Nvidia’s H200 GPUs. While China remains barred from accessing the latest generation Blackwell architecture, H200 for sale to Beijing opens a window for Chinese tech giants.
China has reportedly directed its chipmakers to reduce reliance on Nvidia and increase dependency on local chipmakers. ByteDance is stated to be co-developing two custom AI GPUs with Broadcom and TSMC, expected to debut in 2026. Analysts believe these homegrown chips will eventually handle inference, the day-to-day running of TikTok’s algorithm and content moderation. ByteDance has previously gone to lengths to circumvent supply constraints, including renting cloud computing resources from overseas data centres to power its global operations.
China has reported issues with the latest mandate under which domestic chipmakers will be required to source at least 50% of their equipment from local suppliers. This is seen as a direct response to tightening US export restrictions that have sought to cripple China’s computing capabilities.
