The dollar-denominated facility is one of Asia’s largest loans this year and was expanded from an initial target of $20 billion after strong demand from lenders, the people said. Chinese banks, which account for more than 60 per cent of the commitments, are participating alongside lenders from the United States, Europe and Singapore.
Citigroup and JPMorgan are coordinating the unsecured financing, which carries an initial three-year term and includes options to extend it for a further two years, according to two people familiar with the terms. ByteDance is expected to sign the facility shortly.
The company told lenders that proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes, while people familiar with the transaction said the financing would mainly support its artificial-intelligence plans, including projects outside China. ByteDance did not immediately comment on the loan, JPMorgan did not respond to requests for comment and Citigroup declined to comment.
The size of the borrowing highlights the heavy capital requirements facing technology groups as they build models, buy advanced chips and secure data-centre capacity. ByteDance, whose consumer platforms include TikTok and Douyin, has been increasing investment in AI as competition intensifies among major technology companies in China and abroad.
The new facility ranks behind a $40 billion financing raised by SoftBank in March for investments linked to OpenAI, making ByteDance’s borrowing the second-largest loan in Asia this year. Its expansion from $20 billion also points to strong lender appetite despite the unusually large size and the absence of pledged collateral.
One person familiar with the transaction said such large unsecured loans were rare, with participating banks relying heavily on ByteDance’s credit standing rather than assets or shares pledged against the debt. The structure gives the company substantial funding flexibility while avoiding the need to encumber corporate assets.
Part of the financing is expected to support ByteDance projects outside China, including commitments connected with data centres in Southeast Asia, one person said. ByteDance is an offtaker for several facilities being developed in the region, meaning it contracts to purchase an agreed amount of computing capacity from data-centre operators.
The company’s AI strategy has also involved efforts to secure more processing hardware. ByteDance has been in discussions with Shanghai-based chip designer Iluvatar CoreX over purchases of processors for AI inference workloads and has considered a similar arrangement with Baidu, people familiar with those discussions have said.
Inference refers to the process of running trained AI models to generate responses or other outputs, a stage that can require large amounts of computing power as usage grows. That demand is pushing technology companies to combine spending on chips with long-term investments in servers, power and data-centre capacity.
Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at technology research firm Omdia, said ByteDance was competing with domestic hyperscale operators in AI data centres and with global rivals in multimodal AI models. Both areas require substantial investment, particularly as leading AI developers continue to pour capital into model training and infrastructure, he said.
The financing also marks a sharp increase from ByteDance’s previous major global loan. The company raised $10.8 billion from roughly 20 Chinese and international lenders in September 2024, making the new transaction almost three times larger.
The heavy participation by Chinese lenders is notable because the facility is denominated in dollars and brings together banks across several financial centres. Syndicated loans allow borrowers to raise large sums while spreading exposure among multiple institutions, rather than relying on a single lender. For ByteDance, the arrangement broadens access to offshore funding at a time when AI development is requiring sustained capital expenditure. For participating banks, the unsecured structure leaves repayment dependent principally on the company’s cash generation and overall credit profile.
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