ByteDance Seeks Access to High-End Nvidia Blackwell Chips for Malaysia AI Data Centre

ByteDance Invests $2.5 Billion in High-End Nvidia Chips

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, is making a significant investment in computing power to fuel its ambition of becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI). The company is working with Aolani Cloud, a South Asian firm, to purchase $2.5 billion worth of high-end Nvidia chips, specifically 500 Nvidia Blackwell computing systems comprising 36,000 B200 chips. The hardware will be assembled by Aivres, a server solutions firm, and will be used at a unit in Malaysia.

The computing power will be used to pursue AI research and development outside of China, as well as meet the rising demand for AI from ByteDance's global customers, who account for 25% of its revenue. ByteDance already has a strong footprint in the AI space, operating five of the world's top 50 most popular AI apps by monthly users. The company also has sizeable teams of AI engineers and researchers across the world, in hubs like San Jose, Seattle, and Singapore, who collaborate with their Chinese colleagues for foundational AI research.

This development comes as US-China tensions persist, with US export controls remaining in place that prevent Nvidia from selling its top-of-the-line AI chips directly to China. Chinese companies have been forced to spend more to access computing power beyond their borders, leading to the growth of middlemen who arrange for data centers to be built using Nvidia technology and then lease them to Chinese tech firms. Aolani, the firm working with ByteDance, is one of these middlemen and has already begun leasing AI servers in Malaysia equipped with Nvidia's H100 chips to the TikTok parent from February 2025. ByteDance has already made initial payments for the latest project.

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