A fifth of the country
ByteDance occupies roughly a fifth of China’s delivered data centre capacity and rents nearly all of it, according to SemiAnalysis. The research firm counts more than 24GW nationwide, more than Europe, the Middle East and Africa combined. ByteDance, whose AI products include the Doubao assistant and the Seedance video model, is private and discloses no financials, so its share is an estimate.
The customer everyone chases
That makes ByteDance the client for every wholesale operator court. SemiAnalysis says its tender calendar effectively sets the industry’s order book. GDS and VNET, the two US-listed landlords, signed about 1.3 GW of orders in the first half of 2026, yet won only around a third of the ByteDance and Alibaba orders placed since 2024. The landlords own the buildings, while ByteDance holds the demand. Who really controls China’s AI compute is a less simple question than a capacity table suggests.
Renting versus building
Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu have chosen to build. They spent a combined $20bn in the second quarter, more than double a year earlier, and all three posted negative free cash flow in the same quarter, a first on record. Renting spares ByteDance that drain and let it scale fast, since China routinely delivers 100 MW facilities in under 12 months. The price is controlled. Even so, SemiAnalysis notes ByteDance is now ramping up its own campuses.
What the spending signals
SemiAnalysis counts another 20 GW in the pipeline and 30 GW announced, with much of the new build heading inland under the “Eastern Data, Western Compute” policy. The spending shows demand for compute outrunning what even profitable giants can fund from operations. Whether it pays off is a question these numbers can’t answer.
