TikTok mother or father firm ByteDance has massive plans to purchase Nvidia chips in 2025 — regardless of U.S. restrictions.
ByteDance plans to spend $7 billion on the chips in 2025, in accordance with reporting from The Data, citing inside sources. If ByteDance follows by, it is going to turn out to be one of many world’s prime homeowners of Nvidia chips, regardless of U.S. efforts to limit Chinese language corporations from shopping for U.S. AI chips like these.
In 2022, the U.S. introduced export restrictions on sure sorts of AI chips to international locations, together with China, the place ByteDance is headquartered. These restrictions have gotten tighter a number of instances since.
ByteDance is technically adhering to those restrictions through the use of a loophole: The corporate isn’t bringing the chips on to China and is as an alternative storing them in information facilities situated in different areas like Southeast Asia, in accordance with The Data’s reporting. This doesn’t technically violate U.S. restrictions.
ByteDance runs Doubao, China’s “hottest” AI chatbot with 51 million energetic customers, in accordance with the South China Morning Publish.
TechCrunch reached out to ByteDance for extra data.