ByteDance is in advanced talks with MediaTek to secure custom AI chips for its data center expansion, Bloomberg reports. A deal could make the TikTok parent one of MediaTek’s largest customers for AI data center silicon and give the chipmaker a significant foothold beyond its smartphone processor business.
The discussions concern application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, tailored to ByteDance’s own platforms and workloads rather than general-purpose chips. ByteDance could become MediaTek’s second major customer for such solutions after Google, according to the report.
For large-scale AI infrastructure, a customized accelerator can be designed around the customer’s compute needs, including memory and interconnect architecture. MediaTek says its data center designs aim to increase processing capacity while lowering power use and operating costs, although no performance or efficiency results have been disclosed for any prospective ByteDance chip.
The potential supply arrangement would support ByteDance’s broader AI buildout, which includes Seedance video-generation models. Bloomberg reported that the company is considering infrastructure investments of up to $70 billion in 2026, potentially rising to $100 billion in 2027 if business performance and economic conditions allow. Those figures cover data centers and other AI infrastructure, not the value of a potential MediaTek agreement.
MediaTek has set ambitious targets for its AI data center ASIC business. In a September update, the company projected more than $2 billion in revenue from those chips this year and outlined a goal of capturing 15% to 20% of a market it estimates could reach $80 billion by 2027.
No agreement has been publicly announced. MediaTek declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg, while ByteDance had not responded, and neither chip volumes nor a delivery timetable have been disclosed.
