ByteDance is in talks to acquire MediaTek's AI chips, while Qualcomm has previously secured orders for millions of such chips.

Insight: Beating AI Newsflash – ByteDance is in advanced negotiations with MediaTek to source custom ASIC chips for its data centers. Bloomberg reported on October 15, citing people familiar with the matter, that the two sides are close to a deal, though details including procurement volume, chip specifications, and delivery timeline remain undisclosed. If finalized, ByteDance would become MediaTek’s second major ASIC client after Google. This is not ByteDance’s first foray into securing data center chips from mobile chipmakers: in May this year, Bloomberg revealed the company had reached an agreement with Qualcomm to source millions of ASICs for powering AI Agents, with Qualcomm set to help bring ByteDance’s self-developed chip designs to production. The latest engagement with MediaTek signals ByteDance is expanding its custom chip supply channels to alleviate computing power pressure stemming from U.S. export restrictions and domestic chip capacity shortages. MediaTek, which previously focused primarily on its mobile processor business, has now entered Google’s TPU supply chain and begun competing with players like Broadcom and Qualcomm for data center orders. The firm projects its data center AI chip revenue will exceed $2 billion this year. In August, Nvidia also subscribed to $3.5 billion in MediaTek’s convertible bonds and announced a partnership to develop custom AI infrastructure. While such ASICs can optimize performance, power efficiency, and cost for specific tasks, it remains unconfirmed whether the chips ByteDance is negotiating to purchase will be used for model training or inference.