Sources told CNBC that TikTok’s U.S. unit is seeking to secure several gigawatts of computing power amid a global scramble for digital infrastructure deals.
The company, officially called the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, operates a social media platform in the United States and has been approached about opportunities to secure capacity over the next few years, two people told CNBC who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.
One source said TikTok US is seeking 4 gigawatts of computing power by the early 2030s.
As artificial intelligence workloads become increasingly prominent, companies around the world are looking to acquire more computing power.
A company spokesperson told CNBC that the company “operates primarily on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the U.S., and Oracle continues to be our primary cloud infrastructure provider.”
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) typically runs in facilities such as: oracle lease. CNBC has reached out to Oracle for comment.
There are signs that TikTok US’s product plans may require additional compute down the road.
The company’s website lists a number of machine learning roles. A job ad posted by TikTok states that the company is “shipping flagship B2B AI products at the forefront of large-scale model inference and creative automation.”
TikTok US localizes algorithm training
The TikTok USDS joint venture was created in 2026 pursuant to US President Donald Trump’s executive order ordering the sale of TikTok in the US from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
TikTok US announced in January that it would “retrain, test, and update” its valuable recommendation algorithms built on machine learning with U.S. user data. The company says its recommended algorithms are “protected in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment.”
TikTok US has three managing investors, Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX, each holding 15%. Michael Dell’s investment company, Dell Family Office, is also an investor. ByteDance retained 19.9% of the new entity.
