To accelerate development and help secure foundry capacity, ByteDance is collaborating with US chipmaker Qualcomm
TikTok owner ByteDance aims to finalise the design of its next-generation in-house central processing unit (CPU) by early next year at the latest, targeting mass production and wider deployment in the second half of 2027 to fuel its expanding AI ambitions, according to three people familiar with the matter.
An early version of the proprietary CPU had been used in-house since late last year, one of the people said. However, given the urgent demand, tape-out of the new CPU could be brought forward, another source added.
Tape-out is the final stage of chip design before physical fabrication begins.
The effort comes as the role of high-performance CPUs is being reassessed in the age of agentic AI, where workloads are shifting from pure matrix computation to more complex task orchestration.
For ByteDance, the CPU is part of a broader push to build its own silicon portfolio and integrate more self-developed hardware into its AI infrastructure. Internal computing demand has surged with the growth of products such as Doubao, its popular AI chatbot, and Seedance, its video-generation model. The company, which has rapidly expanded in-house chip designs in recent years, has never publicly disclosed progress in this area.