Why It Matters: ByteDance’s move to use Huawei chips for AI model training comes amid escalating U.S.-China tech tensions. In June, ByteDance reportedly collaborated with U.S. chip designer Broadcom to develop an advanced AI processor, compliant with U.S. export restrictions. This collaboration aimed to secure a stable supply of high-end chips.

ByteDance is training its new AI model on Huawei's chips, which are inferior to the ones made by Nvidia, amid ongoing U.S. trade restrictions on exports to China.

Training AI models is far more demanding and requires huge amounts of data, necessitating the use of ultra-high-performance chips such as Nvidia's premium graphics processing units.

ByteDance's next step in the AI race is to use Huawei's Ascend 910B chip to train a large language AI model, said the people TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance plans to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained primarily with chips from compatriot Huawei Technologies,

TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance plans to develop an AI model trained primarily with chips from compatriot Huawei Technologies, said three people familiar with the matter, as U.S. curbs turn the social media giant homeward in search of chips.