Qualcomm is in talks with ByteDance for custom chip design services, with the initial batch possibly being a VPU chip.

According to Vision One Beating research, as reported by Reuters citing four sources familiar with the matter, Qualcomm is in talks with ByteDance to provide custom chip design services. If successful, ByteDance would become an early client of Qualcomm's custom chip design business. In May of this year, the two parties reached an agreement for the production of a large-model AI chip, with Qualcomm assisting ByteDance in mass producing its designed inference chip. The current discussions regarding a video processing chip (VPU) represent an expansion of the two companies' collaboration into the field of custom chip design services.

The development of the custom chip will reportedly incorporate technology from AlphaWave Semi, a high-speed connectivity technology company acquired by Qualcomm in December 2025. Qualcomm, the world's largest supplier of smartphone modems, is currently seeking to reduce its dependence on the smartphone market and expand into the data center chip sector, focusing on the development of CPUs, inference accelerators, and custom ASIC chips.

Although discussions are ongoing, the outcome of the negotiations remains uncertain, and it is still undetermined whether the collaboration will progress to the chip design and manufacturing phase. ByteDance may also consider other partners. The target for the video processing chip in the discussions is to begin mass production by the end of this year.