Chinese tech giant ByteDance is reportedly planning to purchase more than RMB 40 billion ($5.6 billion) worth of Huawei’s Ascend AI chips in 2026, a sharp increase from nearly zero procurement this year. According to sources, the first batch of Ascend AI chips is expected to enter delivery soon, with an initial order size valued at tens of billions of yuan. The report notes that ByteDance’s decision to ramp up procurement of domestically produced AI computing power is driven by two main factors: the suspension of NVIDIA’s H20 chip supply in April this year, which has exposed a computing capacity shortfall, and the rapid surge in token usage across ByteDance’s cloud computing business Volcano Engine and its AI application Doubao. [Icsmart, in Chinese]
