TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance plans to develop an AI model trained primarily with chips from compatriot Huawei Technologies, three people familiar with the matter have said, as U.S. curbs turn the social media giant homeward in search of chips. ByteDance has diversified to domestic suppliers of chips used in artificial intelligence and has accelerated development of its own since the U.S. started restricting exports of advanced AI chips, such as from market leader Nvidia, in 2022. AI has become central to the technology industry, with firms in sectors as varied as gaming and e-commerce differentiating offerings through the integration of custom AI models -- programs that employ pattern recognition to make decisions.

As first reported by Reuters, ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, is planning to train and develop an AI model using chips from fellow Chinese company Huawei. Three anonymous sources approached Reuters with this information; a fourth source couldn't confirm that ByteDance was using Huawei chips but did say that a new AI model was in development. Previously, ByteDance's AI projects used NVIDIA's H20 AI chips, which were designed for the Chinese market and avoided the trade restrictions the US government placed in 2022. Chinese customers were only allowed to purchase select models of AI chips, which was an attempt to slow down Chinese technological advancement. ByteDance has ordered 100,000 Ascend 910B chips from Huawei this year but only received 30,000 of them.