ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly planning to train and develop its own AI model with chips procured and provided for by Huawei. This was confirmed by multiple sources close to Reuters, including a fourth source whom did say that the AI model was in development.
The choice of chip provider has cast more light on the ongoing chips war between the US and China, which many industry analyst are seeing as a move by the Asian powerhouse to curb the reliance on US-owned NVIDIA’s H20 AI chips, all of which were specially designed for the Chinese market, in an effort to circumvent trade restrictions, put in place by the US government back in 2022. To quickly recap, the US began restricting the export of AI chips into China after it accused its biggest technology brand, Huawei, of helping it to advance their military technologies, among other things.
ByteDance has ordered 100,000 Ascend 910B chips from Huawei but has only received a shipment of 30,000 to date. It is claimed that the Ascend 910B chips are superior to NVIDIA’s A100 chips, both in GPU and computing power. When the owner of the popular social media platform will receive the remaining stock remains unknown.
At the time of writing, ByteDance has not made any official announcement about the switch, and at this current stage, it is unlikely to be the only Chinese company to move away from US-made chips.
