China’s ByteDance is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) chip and is in talks with Samsung Electronics to produce it, with a target of receiving samples by the end of March.
The company plans to produce at least 100,000 units of the chips this year, with production plans to increase to 350,000 units, specifically for AI inference tasks.
The collaboration includes access to a very limited supply of memory chips, making the project strategic in ByteDance’s efforts to strengthen its internal AI capabilities.
The internal chip project is codenamed SeedChip and is part of the company’s strategy to channel resources into AI development, including large language models and their business applications such as short videos, e-commerce, and cloud services.
ByteDance has spent more than 160 billion yuan ($22 billion) on AI projects this year, including buying Nvidia chips and developing in-house chips.
Local rivals such as Alibaba and Baidu have already launched their own AI chips, making the competition for AI chip development in China increasingly fierce.
The move is in line with the trend of global tech giants developing their own AI chips to reduce dependence on major suppliers such as Nvidia, while also complying with US export restrictions on advanced chips to China.
