China’s ByteDance gets access to top Nvidia AI chips, WSJ reports

TIKTOK’S Chinese parent ByteDance is assembling computing power with top Nvidia chips outside China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

ByteDance is working with South-east Asian firm Aolani Cloud to deploy about 500 Nvidia Blackwell computing systems in Malaysia, totaling roughly 36,000 B200 chips, the WSJ report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Aolani acquires these servers from Aivres, a company that assembles servers using Nvidia chips, the report said, adding that if the plan goes through, the hardware involved could cost more than US$2.5 billion.

An Aolani spokesman told WSJ the company was currently operating with about US$100 million in hardware.

ByteDance plans to use the computing power for AI research and development outside China and meet growing global demand for AI from its customers, as per the report.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Nvidia, Bytedance, and Aolani Cloud did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.

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Last month, Reuters reported that the US is willing to allow ByteDance to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips, but the chipmaker has not agreed to proposed conditions for their use, citing a person familiar with the matter. REUTERS