Microsoft bought nearly 500,000 units of Nvidia’s flagship Hopper chips in 2024, and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and Tencent also bought about the same amount, more than Meta, Tesla/xAI, Amazon, and Google.
Chinese cloud giant Tencent and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will be the leading buyers of Nvidia’s flagship AI chips in 2024, second only to Microsoft, according to a report by Omdia and analysis by the Financial Times.
The two Chinese companies have each ordered approximately 230,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs, including the H20 model, which was developed to comply with strict US export regulations to China.
The report reveals that Microsoft purchased 485,000 Hopper chips in 2024, well ahead of its competitors.
Chinese influence
Alistair Spears, senior director of Azure global infrastructure at Microsoft, told the Financial Times: “A good data center infrastructure is a very complex and capital-intensive project. It takes years to plan. We need to predict where our growth is going.” It’s important to have a little buffer. ”
In contrast, Meta purchased 224,000 Hopper GPUs in 2024, while Amazon and Google purchased 196,000 and 169,000, respectively. All three tech giants are moving away from dependence on Nvidia hardware by developing their own custom silicon. According to FT, Google has introduced 1.5 million TPUs, Meta has introduced 1.5 million MTIA chips, and Amazon has introduced 1.3 million Trainium and Inferentia chips, while Microsoft is still in its early stages and has about 200,000 Maia chips. The chip has been introduced.
Nvidia accounted for 43% of server hardware spending in 2024, according to Omdia, but AMD also did well, with Microsoft buying 96,000 Instinct MI300 chips and Meta acquiring 173,000.
While Microsoft comfortably leads in GPU acquisitions, significant investments by ByteDance and Tencent reflect Chinese companies’ determination to secure a strong position in the AI race, with momentum set to continue through 2025. It is expected that this will continue.
The two Chinese companies outpace Google, Meta, Tesla/xAI and Amazon in terms of purchases, despite significant challenges posed by ongoing trade restrictions that are expected to tighten further. We have shown that we can compete with the biggest players. Under the Trump administration.
