NVIDIA B200 Chips to Reportedly Power ByteDance AI Expansion Outside China

The ongoing trade tensions between the US and China have put tech giants from both countries in a dilemma. While Chinese tech companies seek technology developed by US firms to excel in the ongoing AI race, the US has been monitoring each and every move by tech companies within its boundaries.

One of the companies under the US government’s radar has been NVIDIA. The company currently holds the position of making some of the most advanced AI chips, which it wants to supply to China. Although the US government previously restricted NVIDIA from exporting the advanced H200 AI chips to China, it has allowed the AI giant to do so under certain conditions.

Meanwhile, China, which looks to support local suppliers, has no choice but to allow companies from its shores to access NVIDIA’s AI chips. That’s because none of the major suppliers is able to deliver chips like the ones developed by NVIDIA.

ByteDance reportedly deploys 36,000 NVIDIA B200 chips for AI expansion

Among the Chinese companies looking to secure NVIDIA’s AI chips is ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the company is deploying roughly 36,000 Nvidia B200 chips through Southeast Asian partner Aolani Cloud. It is reportedly doing so to build a large-scale AI infrastructure in Malaysia (via Reuters).

The WSJ further reports that the hardware rollout is expected to cost more than $2.5 billion, a massive jump for Aolani, which currently operates around $100 million in hardware. ByteDance plans to leverage this computing power for AI research and development outside China, aiming to meet growing global demand for artificial intelligence from its platforms and customers.

Aolani reportedly says that it fully complies with applicable export controls and provides cloud services to multiple firms across Asia and beyond. More recently, ByteDance has also been in talks with Samsung to develop a custom AI chip, codenamed “SeedChip.”

Let’s not forget that earlier this year, China reportedly also approved DeepSeek to buy NVIDIA’s H200 AI chips with certain conditions. Speaking of NVIDIA, it should be noted that CEO Jensen Huang recently marked the 25th anniversary of the GeForce 3 GPU, calling the card a turning point that helped pave the way for the modern AI era.