ByteDance is developing a custom CPU to support its AI infrastructure.

Huoxing Finance reports that, on May 28, sources familiar with the matter said ByteDance is developing its own CPU to meet its growing artificial intelligence infrastructure demands. Soaring chip prices and prolonged supply shortages are constraining the company’s expansion plans. This move highlights the industry’s accelerating shift toward the “inference” phase, which has significantly increased demand for CPUs and triggered shortages in recent months. The sources added that ByteDance plans to deploy its in-house CPUs in its own servers and data centers to support internal operations and prepare for the large-scale rollout of agent-based products, including the Coze platform. ByteDance is currently pursuing two CPU architecture pathways: one based on the Arm architecture and another on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture, to evaluate which design better suits its long-term data center needs. ByteDance currently sources CPUs from Intel and AMD, both of which have significantly raised prices in recent months, with quarterly sequential increases ranging from 10% to 35%, prompting ByteDance to accelerate its internal alternative solutions. (Reuters)