March 12 (Reuters) – TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance is assembling computing power with top Nvidia chips outside China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
ByteDance is working with Southeast Asian firm Aolani Cloud to deploy about 500 Nvidia Blackwell computing systems in Malaysia, totaling roughly 36,000 B200 chips, the WSJ report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The hardware build-out would likely cost more than $2.5 billion, the report said, adding that Aolani currently operates with about $100 million worth of hardware.
ByteDance plans to use the computing power for AI research and development outside China and to meet growing global demand for AI from its customers, according to the report.
An Aolani spokesperson told Reuters that the company adheres fully to all applicable export control regulations and aims to provide cloud-computing services to multiple companies across Asia and globally.
Reuters could not immediately verify the WSJ report. Nvidia and Bytedance did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Last month, Reuters reported that the United States is willing to allow ByteDance to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips, but the chipmaker has not agreed to proposed conditions for their use, according to a person familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by Shivani Tanna and Angela Christy in Bengaluru; Editing by Sumana Nandy and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
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