• US regulations prohibit China from directly acquiring Nvidia’s powerful H100 GPUs.
• This did not prevent ByteDance from becoming Nvidia’s largest buyer in China.
• The company is also circumventing the export ban by increasing its computing capacity outside China.

ByteDance is the biggest buyer of Nvidia’s AI chips in China as the TikTok owner seeks to establish itself in the artificial intelligence sector, according to the Financial Times reported.

A Export ban to the United States introduced in 2022 prevents China from acquiring Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs. One of them is the H100, a coveted chip that powers data-intensive AI models and has helped make Nvidia a $3 trillion company amid the global AI boom.

The ban limits China to Nvidia’s less powerful H20 chip. In May, Chinese government officials asked local technology companies to purchase domestically manufactured chips.

Despite US regulations and calls from China, ByteDance has become the largest buyer of Nvidia’s AI chips, sources interviewed by FT said. A source told the publication that ByteDance is Nvidia’s largest customer in Asia.

The report did not disclose figures, but The information reported in September that TikTok’s parent company had placed orders for more than 200,000 Nvidia H20s this year.

Bytedance appears to be seeking a workaround to the U.S. ban on getting its hands on Nvidia H100 and Blackwell chips by expanding computing capacity outside China, including planning new data centers in Malaysia, the company said. FT from sources close to the matter.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Sunday.

The TikTok owner’s push to acquire more Nvidia chips is part of the company’s broader efforts to establish itself as an AI powerhouse.

The company siphoned off top engineers from rival companies and startups, according to the FT. In 2021, the company has indicated its intention to attract foreign talents in AIBusiness Insider reported.

Bytedance also joins a chorus of big tech companies looking to disrupt Nvidia’s dominance by developing its own chip. Sources familiar with the matter told the FT the company was building an AI chip for machine learning along the lines of Google Tensor Processing Unit.

Earlier this year, ByteDance unveiled a non-publicly available tool called FluxVoice. This tool allows users to change their voice to that of another person, such as a celebrity, using AI. The company also launched Cici AI, an AI-powered chat assistant that builds on OpenAI’s GPT.

As it strives to become a formidable player in the AI ​​race, ByteDance continues to face major obstacles, including a slowing user growth rate on TikTok and an uncertain future in the United States, where an appeals court recently upheld ban on short video platform. The judges concluded that ByteDance must sell TikTok to avoid being banned from app stores.

Several ultra-rich investors have offered to buy the platform, including Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank,” former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.

“We don’t want this to be banned,” McCourt said Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation. “I would add that President-elect Trump also said he didn’t want to see it banned. So now let’s talk about selling. »