ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is reportedly planning an ambitious $7 billion investment to access Nvidia GPUs through cloud services, bypassing US sanctions that prevent direct purchases of advanced chips, according to The Information.
While ByteDance cannot directly buy high-performance Nvidia GPUs for its Chinese data centers due to US restrictions, the company appears to have found a workaround by renting GPU computing power from cloud providers located outside the United States, particularly in Middle Eastern and Asian countries.
This strategy is part of a larger $20 billion AI infrastructure investment plan, which includes data center development and submarine cable projects. At current market rates of approximately $1.33 per GPU hour, a $7 billion budget could theoretically provide access to over 600,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs running continuously throughout 2025.
However, ByteDance has officially denied these reports. The company is already a major GPU consumer, having reportedly spent over $2 billion on more than 200,000 Nvidia H20 GPUs (a modified version approved for Chinese market) in 2024.
The company appears to be pursuing multiple paths to secure its AI computing needs. Beyond cloud GPU rental plans, ByteDance is reportedly collaborating with Broadcom to develop its own AI processors. These custom chips, planned for mass production in 2026, would include separate processors for AI training and inference workloads.
ByteDance's current AI projects include the Doubao chatbot, which serves 51 million active users. If the reported cloud GPU investment materializes, ByteDance would become one of the world's largest consumers of AI computing resources, marking a new chapter in how companies navigate international technology restrictions.