ByteDance signs a $29.6 billion loan agreement to accelerate AI infrastructure development

TikTok's parent company ByteDance has signed a loan agreement totaling $29.6 billion with 28 banks, including HSBC and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The loan has a term of three years, extendable up to five years, with an interest rate 0.68 percentage points above the benchmark rate. This is the second-largest loan in Asia this year, following the $40 billion loan arranged by SoftBank in March.

According to Bloomberg, ByteDance plans to use this loan for general corporate purposes to advance its artificial intelligence development goals. The company previously borrowed $10.8 billion from about 20 lenders in 2024, and the initial size sought for this loan was $20 billion. ByteDance was valued at approximately $550 billion in February this year, and Bloomberg reported in May that the company is considering investing up to $70 billion in data centers and other AI infrastructure by 2026.

As the loan news was released, Elon Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for a slowdown in the AI race, expressing concerns about safety issues. Additionally, a report from Bitcoin Suisse predicts that the largest hyperscale computing companies in the U.S. will spend over $800 billion this year, exceeding $1 trillion by 2027.