TikTok's parent company ByteDance is planning to
increase its spending on artificial intelligence (AI) in 2026, with $23 billion in reported capital expenditure.
According to The Financial Times, ByteDance's 2026 AI spending would mark a
multibillion-dollar boost to the company's 2025 investment, with half the money expected to be used to buy semiconductors meant for the development of AI models and apps.
The report also
suggests that at least $12 billion will go to AI processors, or AI CPUs, which are responsible for a model's ability to offer users popular features such as real-time transcription, image recognition
and more.
advertisement
advertisement
Earlier this month, ByteDance contacted Nvidia -- the current market leader in AI processors -- about buying 20,000 H200 AI chips, estimated to cost $20,000 per chip. However, even
though U.S. President Donald Trump stated that he would allow the powerful chip to be exported to China, authorities in the region have yet to respond with a decision on the matter.
As
ByteDance aims to become a leader in AI development overseas, U.S. tech groups are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on their own AI investment plans. In November, for example, Meta committed
spending over $600 billion through 2028 in the U.S. in support of its
“superintelligence” AI goals.
In addition, Google increased its projected capital expenditures multiple times in 2025 -- up from $75 billion to $93 billion -- whereas Microsoft
planned to invest around $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers throughout 2025 to train its models.
Despite its AI spending being dwarfed by U.S.-based tech giants, ByteDance's Doubao AI
chatbot app remains the most popular chatbot in China, reporting 155 million weekly active users in the second week of December, according to data collected from QuestMobile.