Nscale, the Nvidia-backed AI cloud provider, buried a significant relationship with Byte Dance in its pitch to investors, only mentioning the Chinese tech giant in an obscure filing despite its accounting for nearly three-quarters of its sales last year.

Beijing-based Byte Dance was one of the first major customers for Nscale’s nascent cloud-computing business, renting access to advanced Nvidia AI chips in Norway, according to people familiar with the matter and SEC filings. Their relationship was indicated only in a document published on Friday alongside Nscale’s main filing for a US initial public offering that did not directly mention Byte Dance by name.

Nscale emerged in 2024 as a rival to so-called neoclouds such as Core Weave and Nebius, as demand for AI computing power surged. It quickly attracted significant funding, as well as big-name board members including former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg and Berkshire Hathaway director Susan Decker. Its multimillion-dollar deal with Byte Dance helped jump-start the London-based company’s journey to a New York IPO little more than two years after the company launched. Over the past 12 months, it has gone on to sign much larger multibillion-dollar contracts with Microsoft and Anthropic.

Byte Dance used Nscale’s cloud facility in Norway to access Nvidia chips that it would otherwise have been unable to buy in China, exploiting a loophole in US trade restrictions, according to filings. The arrangement is entirely legal but exposes companies such as Nscale to regulatory and reputational risks, at a time when the US and China are engaged in a high-stakes race to dominate the fast-growing technology. Nscale declined to comment.