ByteDance occupies one-fifth of China’s data centre capacity: SemiAnalysis

Howard Liuin BeijingPublished: 5:00pm, 28 Sep 2026ByteDance accounts for roughly one-fifth of China’s delivered data centre capacity, making the TikTok owner the country’s largest tenant and a main driver of its artificial intelligence buildout, according to new estimates by research firm SemiAnalysis.

The estimate comes from the firm’s tracking of more than 1,000 facilities in China operated by over 60 companies. ByteDance rents nearly all of its data centre footprint, SemiAnalysis said. Its AI products include Doubao, an assistant that ByteDance says has hundreds of millions of users, and Seedance, a video generation model.

While ByteDance’s financials remain undisclosed as a private company, capital spending by its listed peers has surged. Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and Baidu spent a combined US$20 billion on capital expenditure in the second quarter, more than double the figure from a year earlier, according to the report published on Friday. All three tech giants posted negative free cash flow in the same quarter for the first time on record.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.