Samsung may make AI chips for the firm behind TikTok

China’s ByteDance, the maker of TikTok, is developing a chip to process its AI workloads in collaboration with Broadcom. Earlier reports about it suggested that the brand would get it manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Well, it looks like ByteDance is planning to go with Samsung Foundry instead.

According to Reuters, ByteDance is in talks with Samsung to get its AI chip manufactured. Reportedly, Samsung will provide ByteDance with sample chips by the end of next month (March 2026). The Chinese company aims to get 100,000 units of the chip manufactured this year, and get the production ramped up to 356,000 units eventually.

Since AI started getting popular, the demand for memory chips has been skyrocketing, as these tasks run on servers with AI accelerators featuring a large amount of HBM3 and HBM4. As such, the prices of memory chips have been rising rapidly, and they are getting harder to procure. Currently, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix are the only major brands making these chips.   

As Samsung is eager to attract customers to its chip manufacturing business and ByteDance is looking to get chips made from it, this is a great chance for the Chinese company to negotiate with the South Korean tech giant on memory chips as well, and that’s exactly what it is doing. Reportedly, the deal between the two companies also includes access to memory chips.

While ByteDance says that the report is inaccurate, Samsung has refused to comment on the matter. Since Samsung came up with the second-generation 2nm fabrication process (SF2P), big companies around the world have been knocking on its door to get their chipsets made. That includes Tesla, Apple, and AMD. Now, ByteDance has joined the list.