ByteDance borrows $30B to invest in AI infrastructure

ByteDance just convinced nearly 30 banks to hand over $29.6 billion with no collateral attached. The unsecured syndicated loan, coordinated by Citigroup and JPMorgan, was originally pegged at $20 billion. Then demand piled up past $30 billion, and ByteDance decided to upsize the facility to $29.6 billion. The deal represents the second-largest dollar-denominated borrowing in Asia for 2026, trailing only SoftBank’s $40 billion facility from March, which was tied to its OpenAI dealings. Where the money is going ByteDance plans to channel the proceeds into overseas AI infrastructure, with a particular focus on building data centers across Southeast Asia. The company is reportedly weighing capital expenditures of up to $70 billion in 2026, with projections stretching toward $100 billion in 2027. Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft are collectively expected to spend a combined $725 billion on AI-related capital expenditure in 2026. US export restrictions on advanced chips have made ByteDance’s path to AI dominance considerably more complicated. Building data centers in Southeast Asia serves a dual purpose: it puts infrastructure closer to fast-growing markets, and it creates supply chain fl...