Bytedance Raises Capital Expenditure Forecast to Over 200 Billion Yuan by 2026

According to two informed sources quoted in South China Morning Post, ByteDance plans to raise this year's capital expenditure to over 200 billion yuan, marking an increase of at least 25% compared to the preliminary plan of 160 billion yuan discussed at the end of last year.

The insiders claim that the increase in investment is related to the company's continuous escalation in AI and is also influenced by the rising costs of memory chips. The report also mentions that ByteDance has allocated a higher proportion of the budget to domestic AI chips.

This path aligns with the trend of Chinese technology companies to reduce geopolitical risks and increase the use of domestic semiconductors. The uncertainty in chip procurement still lies in the fact that the U.S. has approved NVIDIA to export H200 to China, but local companies have not yet been approved to import.

ByteDance's AI investment has already been reflected in business expansion and overseas infrastructure. The company owns DouBao, a large model, and Seedance video generator. It has recently been approved by Thailand to invest 25 billion USD in local data infrastructure and announced an additional 1 billion euros for a data center in Finland.

Compared with American tech giants, ByteDance's scale of investment is still relatively small. Google and Microsoft say their annual capital expenditure is around $190 billion, Meta has raised this year's capital expenditure estimate to $145 billion, and Amazon maintains a $200 billion outlook.