TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has reportedly quietly invested in Xinyuan Semiconductors, a Chinese memory chip manufacturer.
A report from Pandalya technology media site based in Beijing, ByteDance reportedly positions itself as the chipmaker’s third-largest shareholder, with an indirect stake of 9.5%.
A ByteDance spokesperson confirmed this previously undisclosed investment to Pandaily, stating that the goal is to accelerate the development of VR headsets. The move is in line with ByteDance’s growing interest in the VR sector as it plans to take on Meta’s Quest and Apple’s Vision Pro.
One step further in VR
Based in Shanghai and founded in 2019, Xinyuan Semiconductors specializes in Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) technology and related chip products. The company’s portfolio covers three major application areas: high-performance industrial control and automotive SoC and ASIC chips, Computing in Memory (CIM) IP and chips, and System-on-Memory (SoM) chips.
This investment in Xinyuan Semiconductors is not ByteDance’s first venture into the semiconductor industry. In 2021, the tech giant also invested in Moore Thread, a Chinese GPU manufacturer.
The company’s strategic investments indicate a clear intention to compete in the VR space. TikTok is already available as a native app for Vision Pro.
But while this latest investment could potentially set the stage for a showdown with Apple and its Vision Pro headset, ByteDance currently has a much bigger battle ahead of it.
The US House of Representatives recently passed a significant bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in America if its Chinese parent company fails to sell its controlling stake in the social media app within the next six months.