TikTok owner ByteDance is ramping up its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, boosting its planned capital expenditure this year to more than 200 billion yuan (US$30 billion), according to two people familiar with the matter.
This represented an increase of at least 25 per cent compared with a preliminary plan discussed late last year that proposed AI capex of 160 billion yuan, they said.
The increase was necessary because of the company’s growing commitment to AI, as well as rising memory chip costs, one of the people said.
Notably, ByteDance has allocated a proportionally larger budget to domestic AI chips, now a common practice among Chinese tech companies to mitigate geopolitical risks and to heed Beijing’s call to use more domestic semiconductors.
A screenshot of the Doubao AI chatbot from ByteDance. Photo: Shutterstock Images
ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The Beijing-based company, known for its Doubao AI models and Seedance video generator, has bet big on AI.
ByteDance has also expanded its AI and digital footprint overseas. A US$25 billion investment in Thailand’s data infrastructure – the company’s biggest project announced to date in Southeast Asia – was approved by Bangkok earlier this week. It represents a massive increase from the initial spending plan for US$8.8 billion in Thailand over the next five years.
Separately, the company announced last month an additional €1 billion (US$1.2 billion) for a data centre in Finland as part of its continued expansion of digital infrastructure in Europe.
Last year, the AI capex of China’s internet giants collectively stood at 400 billion yuan, about a tenth of their US peers, Wei Xiong, UBS China internet industry analyst, said in a report in December.
Originally written by: Coco Feng in Guangdong and Ben Jiang in Beijing
Source: South China Morning Post
Published on: 9 May 2026
Link to original article: ByteDance raises 2026 capex by at least 25% amid AI boom, rising memory costs, sources say
