This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
ByteDance, the private company behind TikTok, is getting ready to open the checkbook in a big way as it pushes harder into artificial intelligence. The company is planning roughly $23 billion in AI-related capital spending in 2026, betting heavily on computing power to fuel its next phase of growth.
Most of that money will go toward the infrastructure behind Doubao, ByteDance’s fast-growing AI assistant, along with tools that power advertising and content recommendations. A key part of the plan is a trial of about 20,000 Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) H200 chips, a roughly $400 million investment that would give ByteDance access to top-tier AI hardware at a time when such supply is tightly controlled. Reports suggest more than half of the budget could be dedicated just to AI processors.
That spending still trails U.S. giants like Meta (NASDAQ:META) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), but ByteDance’s private status gives it flexibility to play the long game. Doubao’s rapid rise in China shows why the company is leaning in.
Why it matters: ByteDance is signaling that AI is now core to its business, not an experiment, and it is willing to spend aggressively to stay ahead.