AI Daily: ByteDance plans to spend $23B on AI in 2026

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

AI SPENDING: TikTok owner ByteDance is set to expand its outlay on AI next year, with the company making preliminary plans to spend $23B, or RMB 160B, in capital expenditure in 2026, Zijing Wu and Ryan McMorrow of The Financial Times report, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. More than half of the total will be spent on acquiring advanced semiconductors to develop AI models and applications, the sources added. This is an increase from the RMB 150B invested in AI in 2025. Oracle (ORCL), Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the U.S. entity under a deal set to close on January 22, while nearly a third of the company will be held by affiliates of current ByteDance investors, and almost 20% will be retained by ByteDance. Publicly traded companies in the social media space include Meta Platforms (META), Pinterest (PINS), Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP).

AI CHIP: AMD‘s (AMD) China-compliant AI accelerator is nearing commercial rollout, with Chinese tech companies and cloud-service providers mulling orders, MLex reports. Alibaba (BABA) plans to buy 40,000-50,000 of AMD’s MI308 accelerators, according to the report.

PARTIAL ROLE: Benchmark reiterates a Hold rating on Marvell (MRVL), telling investors in a research note that following further industry discussions, it appears Marvell did not lose Amazon’s (AMZN) Trainium3 and 4 designs to Alchip, and instead, Amazon added Alchip for additional design support while Marvell retains a position. Marvell’s continued involvement leverages its strengths in specialized IP blocks like HBM and I/O, though Amazon is licensing PCIe SerDes from Synopsys (SNPS) rather than Marvell, the firm says, adding that while retention of part of Trainium3 is positive, the engagement represents a contraction relative to Trainium2.