TikTok parent ByteDance began assessing the viability of building its own semiconductors for internal applications and to meet the computing needs of its own services, South China Morning Post reported.

Citing comments made by the Beijing-based social media giant, the newspaper noted ByteDance was at the early stages of building a chip design team and had no intention of getting into the manufacturing business.

Part of move in this area is a recruitment drive, which has seen it post a number of job advertisements for experts covering several chip-related roles.

The company has traditionally focused on building and running applications, but has made hardware moves before.

Its core brands include short form video giant TikTok and Chinese-language version Douyin; news content platform Toutiao; social network Helo; and collaboration tool Lark, which is available in Japan and Singapore.

Similar to its social media peers, ByteDance has started making moves into the AR, VR and nascent metaverse space through a range of investments, including the purchase of VR headset company Pico in 2021.