ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, has earmarked over 150 billion yuan ($20.64 billion) in capital expenditure for this year, much of which will be centred on artificial intelligence, two people briefed on the matter said.

TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model as a global race intensified to create AI models capable of tackling complex problems.

TikTok, owned by ByteDance, is on the verge of being banned in the United States. The thing is, the government also went after other ByteDance apps, and there are quite a few of them operating in the U.

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, has earmarked over 150 billion yuan ($20.64 billion) for capital expenditures in 2025, with a substantial portion of the funds being directed toward artificial intelligence,

The Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek has rattled markets with claims its latest AI model performs on a par with those of OpenAI, despite using less advanced, more energy efficient computer chips.

ByteDance released Doubao-1.5-pro, an upgrade to its flagship AI model, which it claims outperforms OpenAI's o1 in AIME.

The AI race gets frantic as Alibaba throws down a challenge at DeepSeek just days after ByteDance launches its own new AI model.

The development comes as the Beijing-based company faces pressure from the US government to sell its social media app TikTok.

ByteDance has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered code editor in competition with American leaders like Cursor and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, just after US President Donald Trump delayed the enforcement of a law requiring the company to divest TikTok.

DeepSeek, now with models that rival the best of the West, has set the stage for a global war in AI inference pricing that is only now becoming clear to the world.

Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, according to President Donald Trump. If that rings a bell it’s because Microsoft sought to buy the social media app in 2020, the last time Trump tried to ban the app.