SemiAnalysis: ByteDance Accounts for Nearly 1/5 of China's Data Center Capacity, Almost Entirely Through Leasing

Beating AI News Flash: Semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis released a China data center survey, tracking over 1,000 facilities operated by more than 60 operators one by one. The report estimates that by the end of 2026, China's data center capacity will exceed 24GW, second only to the US's 56GW globally. ByteDance alone accounts for about one-fifth, making it the largest data center tenant in the country.

ByteDance has leased over 4GW of data center capacity, with suppliers including Chindata, GDS and VNET, among others. The report states that as of early 2026, ByteDance still contributes about 90% of Chindata's revenue. ByteDance has also begun accelerating self-building, constructing large data centers in Shanxi, Anhui and Inner Mongolia to reduce reliance on external suppliers.

Although China's data centers have long been considered to have a high vacancy rate, AI computer rooms remain in short supply. The reason is that a large number of old computer rooms lack sufficient power supply and cooling capacity, making it difficult to directly deploy high-power AI servers. Newly built large AI data centers are rapidly being fully leased.

Taking a 100MW data center as an example, excluding IT equipment such as servers, China's construction cost is about $300 million, while the US's is about $1.5 billion. Facilities of the same scale in China can usually be delivered in about 12 months. Compared with the power supply and approval challenges faced by the US, the more prominent bottleneck for China's expansion of AI data centers is the supply of advanced chips.