“Without these Nvidia chips, we can’t pursue the training for any large-language model,” said one Baidu employee, who declined to be named. The companies are developing their own home-grown large-language models after the success of ChatGPT, the breakout chatbot launched by Microsoft-backed OpenAI eight months ago. ByteDance has numerous small teams working on various generative AI products, including an AI chatbot codenamed Grace that is undergoing internal testing, according to two company sources. ByteDance tested a generative AI feature for its social media app TikTok earlier this year, named TikTok Tako, which licenses OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Two employees with direct knowledge...