TikTok owner ByteDance is securing large quantities of Nvidia Blackwell chips in Malaysia and focusing on building AI computing infrastructure outside China, the Wall Street Journal reported on March 12 local time, citing people familiar with the matter.

ByteDance is working with Southeast Asian cloud provider Aolani Cloud to pursue a plan to deploy about 500 Nvidia Blackwell systems and 36,000 B200 chips in Malaysia. The related hardware costs are estimated to exceed $2.5 billion.

Aolani buys servers from Aivres, which assembles servers equipped with Nvidia chips.

ByteDance plans to use the computing resources it builds for AI research and development conducted outside China and to meet demand for AI services for global customers.

ByteDance offers more than 10 AI apps in China, including chatbots, video creation and learning assistants, and is also releasing overseas versions. Its AI video generation model "Seedance" creates live-action short videos with only script input and recently drew attention.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said in January that ByteDance apps accounted for 5 of the world's top 50 AI consumer apps by monthly active users.

ByteDance is also said to be in talks to introduce AI servers equipped with more than 7,000 B200 chips at a data centre in Indonesia. ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo (량루보) told employees in January that the goal is "to reach the very top in AI."