[News] ByteDance Reportedly Develops In-House CPUs Amid Supply Tightness; Explores Both Arm and RISC-V
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and one of China’s largest AI players, is reportedly moving into CPU development as inference demand reshapes AI infrastructure needs. According to Reuters, sources said ByteDance is developing central processing units (CPUs) to support its growing AI infrastructure needs, as surging chip prices and persistent supply shortages constrain the company’s expansion plans.
ByteDance is said to be planning to deploy its proprietary CPUs in its own servers and data centers to support internal operations, as the company prepares a major rollout of agent-based products, including its Coze platform.
The report adds that the project remains at an early stage, with ByteDance having approached several external partners to support the effort. These partners are expected to assist with both chip design and securing foundry manufacturing capacity.
ByteDance Reportedly Explores Arm and RISC-V Paths for In-House CPUs
Notably, the report points out that ByteDance is exploring two architecture tracks for its CPU development: one based on Arm and the other on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture, as it evaluates which design is better suited to its long-term data center needs.
ByteDance currently sources CPUs from Intel and AMD, which have raised prices sharply in recent months, with quarter-over-quarter increases ranging from 10% to as much as 35%, sources said. The rising costs have prompted ByteDance to accelerate its push for in-house alternatives.
The move toward proprietary silicon also comes as Intel has warned Chinese customers that server CPU delivery lead times could stretch to as long as six months, as the report notes. AMD CEO Lisa Su also said last week that the global CPU market remains “tight,” with demand exceeding forecasts and supply constraints expected to continue.
ByteDance’s latest effort places it within a growing group of tech companies that increasingly see custom silicon as worth the design challenges. As the report notes, global hyperscalers including Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are also developing their own CPUs to reduce costs and better tune performance for specific workloads.
Meanwhile, the report points out that NVIDIA is also expanding beyond GPUs into the CPU market. According to Wccftech, NVIDIA says its Vera CPUs open up a new US$200 billion total addressable market, with the company estimating US$20 billion in CPU revenue this year alone, mostly driven by Vera.
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(Photo credit: ByteDance)
