Qualcomm to supply AI chips to TikTok owner - Bloomberg. Shares soared to a record high

Chipmaker Qualcomm has agreed with Chinese company ByteDance, which owns the social network TikTok, to supply chips to date-centers for artificial intelligence, sources told Bloomberg. Investors took the news with enthusiasm: Qualcomm shares jumped by 8.3%. By the close of trading, quotes cut the growth in half, but still ended the session with a new record at $248.82.

ByteDance plans to purchase several million specialized Qualcomm chips that will support the company's AI agent software. Representatives of both companies did not respond to inquiries. The chipmaker's CEO Cristiano Eamon previously said he was in talks with a number of potential customers, without naming them.

Qualcomm has long sought to go beyond the production of processors for smartphones and strengthen its position in the market of AI chips, where Nvidia still dominates, recalls Bloomberg. Nvidia shares fell by 0.2% at the end of trading on May 26.

The deal with the Chinese tech giant opens the door for Qualcomm to partner with a large customer with high procurement volumes and a presence in the fast-growing segment of the semiconductor industry, the agency said.

ByteDance is sharply ramping up investment in AI infrastructure: it has increased its 2026 capital expenditure target by 25% to 200 billion yuan ($30 billion), the South China Morning Post wrote earlier this month. According to Bloomberg's source, the agreement with Qualcomm will help ByteDance turn its already proprietary chip design into a mass-produced processor. The company's flagship AI agent Doubao, which competes with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, remained the most downloaded AI chatbot in China for most of last year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor