TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly developing its own custom AI CPUs in a bid to reduce its reliance on US chipmakers. Per a Reuters report, ByteDance's new chip is inspired by Groq's "language processing units," a fancy term for a chip optimized for inference tasks — running AI models instead of training them. The move comes in a context where inference-heavy agentic AI is quickly becoming the new normal. The project is seemingly in the concept and design stage, with Reuters' sources claiming that ByteDance is evaluating both Arm and RISC-V designs.
Additionally, The Information claims ByteDance is partnering with Chinese startup InnoStar Semiconductor for memory technology related to the project, potentially obviating the need to acquire rare and expensive HBM chips from Samsung and the like. The Chinese startup got investments from ByteDance and Alibaba, China's cloud and e-commerce giant.
