TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly developing its own custom AI CPUs — company looks to ease China's dependence on US chipmakers

ByteDance is reportedly in the concept and design phase of a custom AI CPU for inference workloads, inspired by Groq’s chip approach.

The company is evaluating Arm and RISC-V architectures and may be working with external partners, including possible memory efforts with InnoStar Semiconductor.

The project appears to fit into ByteDance’s wider AI hardware strategy alongside its SeedChip accelerator.

If it succeeds, ByteDance could cut costs, reduce dependence on U.S. chipmakers, and strengthen China’s domestic AI supply chain.