TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly developing its own custom AI CPUs — company looks to ease China's dependence on US chipmakers

Tech Industry Manufacturing Semiconductors TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly developing its own custom AI CPUs — company looks to ease China's dependence on US chipmakers News By Bruno Ferreira published 29 May 2026 Dovetails nicely with the company's incoming Seedchip accelerator. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works . (Image credit: Getty / NurPhoto) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 3 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly developing its own custom AI CPUs in a bid to reduce its reliance on US chipmakers. Per a Reuters report, ByteDance's new chip is inspired by Groq's "language processing units," a fancy term for a chip optimized for inference tasks — running AI models instead of training them. The move comes in a context where inference-heavy agentic AI is quickly becoming the new normal. The project is seemingly in the concept and design stage, with Reuters' sources claiming that ByteDance is evaluating both Arm and RISC-V designs. Additionally, The Information claims ByteDance is partnering with Chinese startup InnoStar Semiconductor for memory technology related to the project, potentially obviating the need to acquire rare and expensive HBM chips from Samsung and the like. The Chinese startup got investments from ByteDance and Alibaba, China's cloud and e-commerce giant. However, ByteDance doesn't appear to have its own chip design teams, and will purportedly rely on "several external partners", who are expected to also take care of the actual silicon manufacturing. The firm's CPU project takes place against a geopolitical tussle that got China's government banning the purchase of Nvidia H200 Blackwell chips, after the Trump administration backtracked on its technological export controls. Latest Videos From You may like