Shanghai (TDI): ByteDance, the Chinese parent firm of TikTok, intends to create an AI model trained on chips from Huawei Technologies. This development comes as US regulations force the social media behemoth to look inward for chips.
Since the US started restricting exports of sophisticated AI chips, such as those from industry leader Nvidia, in 2022.
ByteDance has expanded to include domestic suppliers of processors used in artificial intelligence and expedited its research.
Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a major player in the technology sector, with businesses in a wide range of industries, including gaming and e-commerce, using custom AI models—programs that use pattern recognition to make decisions—to differentiate their offers.
ByteDance’s next move in the race against artificial intelligence is to develop a large-language AI model using Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip.
ByteDance is developing a new artificial intelligence model; however, it is unclear if it will use Huawei chips.
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ByteDance uses the Ascend 910B mostly for less computationally intensive inference tasks, such as making predictions with AI models that have already been trained.
AI model training is far more demanding and data-intensive, requiring ultra-high-performance computers like Nvidia’s premium graphics processing units.
The new model will not be as powerful as ByteDance’s current AI model, Doubao in terms of capability and complexity. An inquiry for comment from ByteDance was not answered.
Speaking for ByteDance, Michael Hughes, a TikTok representative in Washington, DC, stated, “The whole idea here is incorrect. Not a single new model is being created.”
ByteDance bought over 100,000 Ascend 910B chips this year, but as of July, had only received less than 30,000 of them, making the pace too slow to meet the company’s demands.
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A deadline for the new model has not been determined due to limited availability and processing capacity to Nvidia’s chips available in China.
ByteDance’s AI technology is utilized in numerous applications, including the text-to-video tool Jimeng, and in its flagship large-language model, unveiled in August 2023 and rebranded as chatbot Doubao.
This month, it unveiled two Doubao models that place emphasis on videos to rival OpenAI.
According to Bloomberg News, ByteDance is targeting a record-breaking $9.5 billion corporate loan in Asia. Since the beginning of the year, the use of these apps has increased dramatically. ByteDance’s chatbot, for example, has amassed over 10 million monthly active users, making it one of China’s most popular apps.
ByteDance is now one of the biggest consumers of Huawei’s AI chips due to the growing emphasis on AI.
It is also the biggest buyer of Nvidia’s H20 AI processor, which the US chipmaker customized for the Chinese market in response to trade restrictions.
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The owner of TikTok is also Microsoft’s biggest client in Asia for Nvidia chips that can be accessed through cloud computing.
ByteDance allotted $2 billion for Nvidia chips last year. Microsoft and Nvidia have not responded yet.
