Chris Miller writes about the link between TikTok and the future of artificial intelligence policy.
At the start of this year, President Donald Trump declared that “enhancing America’s global AI dominance” was a central goal of his presidency. His dealmaking around TikTok’s future in the US market will be an early test of what “AI dominance” means in practice. That is because ByteDance — TikTok’s parent company — is China’s leading AI business.
ByteDance’s clever use of AI recommendation algorithms powers TikTok’s delivery of addictive short videos and effective ads. But its expertise extends beyond this. It has also produced impressive work in other AI subfields, including high-quality large language models and models for robotics.
ByteDance is as central to China’s AI ecosystem as OpenAI or Meta are to America’s. In AI circles, ByteDance has the cachet — and the cash — to lure senior executives away from Google. Its alumni have founded a slew of start-ups, from cross-border ecommerce to AI for biomedical research.
Though start-up DeepSeek has attracted more attention this year, ByteDance is China’s most successful AI business. The private company’s revenue was close to Meta’s in 2023 and it raked in $40bn in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (its preferred metric for profitability), up from $25bn the previous year. While most of the company’s revenue comes from its China-based units, $16bn came from TikTok’s sales to US users.
ByteDance’s profitability has enabled the company to pour money into acquiring AI chips. Last year, it purchased roughly as many Nvidia AI chips as Meta, though these were the lower-quality H20 variant, due to US export restrictions. This year, it plans to spend $5.5bn buying AI chips from Huawei and other Chinese companies, helping to fund the development of China’s homegrown AI chip industry. And it is not only acquiring chips — it is also reportedly exploring other tech infrastructure, like subsea cables.
As Beijing pushes for its companies’ AI models to be adopted abroad, ByteDance’s global footprint is a unique asset.
