ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok, has secured access to approximately 36,000 of Nvidia’s most powerful Blackwell B200 AI chips through a data center partnership in Malaysia, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Thursday. The arrangement, valued at more than $2.5 billion, routes the chips through Southeast Asian intermediary Aolani Cloud, effectively sidestepping U.S. export controls that ban the direct sale of Blackwell processors to China.
The deal involves roughly 500 Nvidia Blackwell computing systems deployed in Malaysian data centers. Aolani Cloud, which began leasing older Nvidia H100 chips to ByteDance in Malaysia in February 2025, acquires the servers through hardware assembler Aivres, a company that specializes in building systems using Nvidia components. The chips remain physically located in Malaysia and are not transferred to China, a distinction that keeps the arrangement within the letter of current U.S. export rules.
Nvidia Says the Deal Complies With U.S. Export Rules
Nvidia confirmed it has no objections to the arrangement, stating that the deal is in line with existing export control regulations. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has also indicated the setup does not violate current restrictions, though analysts note that future policy changes could alter the calculus. Exports of Nvidia AI accelerators to Malaysia generally do not require a BIS export license, but compliance checks remain mandatory.
ByteDance is not stopping with Malaysia. The company is also exploring additional capacity of more than 7,000 B200 chips at a data center in Indonesia, signaling a broader strategy to build computing power across Southeast Asia. ByteDance operates more than a dozen AI applications globally and generates roughly 25% of its revenue outside China, with significant AI research teams based in Singapore, San Jose, and Seattle.
Why This Matters for the Global AI Race
The Blackwell B200 is Nvidia’s most advanced AI processor and sits at the center of the intensifying competition between U.S. and Chinese technology companies. While the Trump administration recently approved the import of older H200 chips to Chinese companies including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent, the significantly more powerful Blackwell processors remain explicitly banned for direct export to China. The Malaysia arrangement represents a legal workaround that lets ByteDance access the same computing power that top U.S. venture capitalists and AI startups rely on to build competitive products.
Malaysia has become a key battleground in the U.S.-China chip standoff. The country introduced licensing requirements for high-performance U.S. chips in 2025 after authorities discovered smuggling networks attempting to redirect restricted hardware to China. Other Chinese tech giants, including Tencent, have pursued similar strategies, leasing Nvidia hardware through third-party cloud operators in countries not covered by the export ban.
What This Means for U.S. Entrepreneurs in AI
For American founders building AI companies, the development raises a practical question about competitive advantage. If China’s largest tech companies can access the same Blackwell chips through legal workarounds, the hardware advantage that U.S. export controls were designed to protect may be eroding. Startups that have built their strategies around the assumption that Chinese competitors would face a computing gap may need to rethink that premise. The deal also comes as U.S. tech leaders, including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, have warned that the AI infrastructure race will produce both major winners and significant failures as companies pour billions into computing capacity.
Neither ByteDance nor Aolani Cloud responded to requests for comment from the outlets that reported the story. Nvidia, ByteDance, and Aolani Cloud all declined to comment to Reuters, which could not independently verify all details of the arrangement.
