ByteDance Raises 2026 Capex to More Than $30 Billion, Deepening AI Push and Shifting Toward Domestic Chips

Summary: ByteDance has raised its 2026 capital expenditure plan by 25% to more than $30 billion, driven by AI investment and rising memory costs. The company plans to spend about $14 billion on NVIDIA GPUs and is increasing its budget for domestic chip purchases.

May 12, 2026, C114 News: According to the South China Morning Post, TikTok parent ByteDance has raised its 2026 capital expenditure plan by 25% to more than $30 billion, citing its commitment to artificial intelligence and rising memory costs. ByteDance said at the end of 2025 that it planned to spend about $14 billion in 2026 on NVIDIA GPUs. In December 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump approved the sale of some advanced AI chips to China, including H200 GPUs and AMD chips.

China’s government, however, has not yet approved imports of those chips. Instead, Beijing has called on Chinese companies to use more domestically made chips. The report, citing two people familiar with the matter, said this has prompted ByteDance to increase its budget for chips developed by Chinese companies.

ByteDance and Alibaba have recently begun testing AI chips developed by Huawei Technologies. Chinese tech companies plan to make broader use of Huawei’s new 950PR chip, as it offers better compatibility with NVIDIA’s CUDA software system and faster response times. ByteDance is also expanding its AI infrastructure footprint. The company is investing $25 billion in Thailand to build data infrastructure and $1.2 billion in Finland to build a data center. ByteDance has also developed its own large language model, Doubao. Although ByteDance has given up most of its ownership of TikTok’s U.S. business, it still retains a 19.9% stake in a new joint venture whose main investors include Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX.