People familiar with the matter said ByteDance is developing its own CPU to meet
growing AI infrastructure demand, citing a surge in chip prices and prolonged
supply shortages that have constrained the company’s expansion plans. The move
highlights an industry shift into the "inference" phase of AI, which has
materially increased CPU demand and precipitated shortages in recent months, the
sources said. ByteDance plans to deploy the in‑house CPUs in its servers and
data centers to support internal operations and to prepare for large‑scale
rollouts of agent‑like products including the Coze platform. The company is
pursuing two CPU architecture tracks — one Arm‑based and one based on the
open‑source RISC‑V instruction set — to assess which design better suits its
long‑term data center needs. ByteDance currently buys CPUs from Intel and AMD;
both suppliers have hiked prices sharply in recent months, with QoQ increases of
roughly 10%–35%, prompting the company to accelerate development of an internal
alternative, the people said.
