ByteDance Ltd., the developer of TikTok, signed a $29.6 billion loan agreement with more than two dozen financial institutions as the company builds out its AI ambitions, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing a person close to the matter.
The Chinese company’s loan is the second-largest in Asia this year, following SoftBank’s $40 billion loan arranged in March. Lenders include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and HSBC, Bloomberg said.
ByteDance is said to be planning to use the loan for general corporate purposes as it builds out its AI ambitions. ByteDance previously borrowed $10.8 billion from about 20 lenders in 2024. The company was considering spending as much as $70 billion in 2026 as part of its plans to build out data centers and other AI infrastructure, Bloomberg reported in May.
The funding signals support for the Asian tech giant, valued at roughly $550 billion in February, which, according to Bloomberg’s report, is at the forefront of AI tech development. ByteDance was reportedly originally seeking a $20 billion loan.
News of the loan follows calls by Elon Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to slow down the AI race, expressing safety concerns. Their call came after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, saying there was a chance AI could kill humans, a claim that was later backed by Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger, who put the doomsday odds at 10%.
The report on the loan also comes as a Bitcoin Suisse report forecasts that the biggest U.S. hyperscalers are expected to spend more than $800 billion this year and over $1 trillion in 2027.
According to the Bloomberg report, 28 banks participated in ByteDance’s three-year loan, which is extendable to up to five years.
ByteDance is borrowing at 0.68 percentage points above the prevailing benchmark interest rate, a level that reflects lenders’ high confidence in the company, the report added. For context, SoftBank’s loan was granted at 2.5 percentage points above the benchmark, reflecting the higher risk lenders associate with that deal.
ByteDance and HSBC had not responded to a CoinDesk request for confirmation by publication time.
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