ByteDance seeks Iluvatar, Baidu AI chips amid US export controls
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is looking to buy AI chips from Chinese firms Iluvatar CoreX and Baidu.
With US export controls making it harder to source advanced foreign AI chips, ByteDance wants to rely more on local suppliers
(if this deal goes through, Iluvatar would become their third domestic GPU partner after Huawei and Cambricon).
Iluvatar to deliver 50,000 Zhikai chips
Iluvatar is set to deliver at least 50,000 chips this year, a big leap for a company that mostly worked with government clients before.
These Zhikai chips will help power things like ByteDance's AI chatbot Doubao.
Meanwhile, Chinese chipmakers are gaining ground fast: they captured nearly 41% of China's AI accelerator server market last year as NVIDIA's share in China has effectively fallen to zero.