byte

On October 28, B.AI announced that ByteDance's Seedance series video generation models have been integrated into the API, with official support for full access. A total of four models have been launched, covering different tiers from flagship to lightweight.Seedance 2.5 focuses on multimodal audio-visual joint generation, with a maximum single duration of 30 seconds, up to 1080p 10-bit, supporting up to 50 reference materials and targeted timestamp editing; Seedance 2.0 emphasizes high-quality output, supporting up to 4K 10-bit with audio-visual synchronization, and allows control of the first and last frames as well as extensions before and after; Seedance 2.0 Fast balances speed and cost, providing quick generation at 480p/720p, suitable for advertising variants and storyboard iterations; Seedance 2.0 Mini meets budget-sensitive creative and prompt testing needs at a lower unit price. Developers can now call the above models through the B.AI API, and are welcome to log in to chat.b.ai/chat to experience it.

On the evening of October 27, Li Liang, Vice President of Douyin Group, responded on Weibo to media person and financial observer Qin Shuo's statement about "the Byte Time of China's Internet," calling it "extremely unrigorous and purely nonsense." Li Liang stated that no company can become the "xx time of China's Internet"; instant messaging has a relatively stable moat due to relationship chains, while short dramas and short videos belong to a fully competitive market with rapidly changing dynamics. He also mentioned that Tencent's growth rate in short dramas and short videos far exceeds that of Douyin and Hongguo, and that instant messaging, gaming, e-commerce, and music occupy a significant amount of user time. He later posted that Qin Shuo's analysis contains several fundamental common sense errors.On the 26th, Qin Shuo published an article on his public account "Qin Shuo's Circle of Friends," citing QuestMobile data from a Nomura Securities report, stating that in July 2026, Douyin surpassed WeChat for the first time among the top 50 apps in China by mobile internet usage time, accounting for 19.4%, while WeChat accounted for 18.8%; the share of Byte's apps was 40.9%, and Tencent's was 29.1%. He questioned whether, despite WeChat's daily active users still exceeding Douyin's, China's Internet is shifting from Tencent time to Byte time, and from WeChat time to "Douyin + Hongguo time." This morning, Qin Shuo posted on social media that in the relevant rankings for August 2026, Byte's share was 41.8% and Tencent's was 28.6%, a difference of 13.2 percentage points. He believes that "Byte time" is a summary of Byte's total usage time share exceeding 40%, which is "a very realistic fact," while emphasizing that the share of user time does not equate to the share of user value.On the same day, Hongguo Short Drama, a platform under ByteDance, issued a statement saying that the claims circulating online about "annual revenue approaching 40 billion yuan" and "this year's revenue reaching 42 to 45 billion yuan" are inaccurate, and that the related comparisons, calculations, and extended interpretations lack factual basis. They stated that most of the current revenue continues to be used for content creator revenue sharing, copyright guarantees, and support for high-quality content. Data from third-party institutions shows that as of July 2026, Hongguo Short Drama had 168 million daily active users, a year-on-year increase of 107%. On October 19, Liu Xing, head of public relations at Doubao, responded to the claim that "over half of the domestic computing power is used to create feel-good dramas," stating that the data is unreliable, and that for Byte, only about 10% of the company's total computing power is used for training and inference of video generation models.

The Ethereum institutional privacy technology organization EthSystems announced the completion of formal verification for its privacy pool (shielded pool), ranging from written specifications to the bytecode running on the Sepolia test network. The verification used different tools in layers: models, circuits, and hashes with Lean; contracts with Halmos and Kontrol; wallets with Aeneas and Verus; and validators and deployment verified through byte-by-byte reconstruction.Double spending and value conservation have been verified by the Lean theorem prover. During the verification, a total of 6 issues were discovered, 3 of which were found in the verification tools themselves. The team also listed the assumptions that still rely on: hash collision resistance, validators rejecting forged proofs, and contract behavior being consistent with the model.

According to a report by Top Chinese Science and Technology Community, one of the core leaders of ByteDance's Seed AI research and development, Zhou Chang, submitted his resignation last week. Sources reveal that he will start his own venture, possibly related to embodied intelligence, and he has already been in contact with well-known funds, major corporate investors, and leading large model unicorns. People close to Zhou Chang, however, deny his resignation.Public information shows that Zhou Chang holds a bachelor's degree from Fudan University and a doctorate from Peking University. He previously served as the head of Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen large model before joining ByteDance, where he was responsible for Seed multimodal interaction, world modeling, and Seed Robotics. Reports indicate that members of his original Alibaba team have also recently submitted their resignations, and the two may start a venture together.

Beating AI news reports that Wen Shilei, the head of ByteDance's commercialization GenAI R&D, has recently left the company, with his next stop likely being the embodied intelligence company Octopus Power, where he will serve as a partner. Wen Shilei joined Baidu in 2011, previously serving as the head of visual technology and chief architect of the smart city division, and has won Baidu's highest award twice. After moving to ByteDance in 2021, he initially focused on digital humans, XR, and other technologies, and later took charge of engineering R&D for generative AI in commercial scenarios such as advertising.This business line has recently lost several core leaders. Former head of the commercialization GenAI department, Peng Bingyue, left in July this year and subsequently joined Google; the former head of the China region, Yuan Zehuan, also left in July to pursue a startup in world modeling. With Wen Shilei's departure, the remaining team members have been reassigned to other departments.Octopus Power was founded in January 2026 by former Horizon and Jianzhihui Robotics executive Du Dalong, primarily developing world models for robots, dexterous hands, and data collection systems, having raised nearly 1 billion yuan in total financing by June this year. On October 15, Octopus Power confirmed that co-founder Liang Zhujin will leave; Liang Zhujin previously oversaw post-training and data operations, and it is currently unclear whether Wen Shilei will take over related responsibilities.

According to "Reading Plus," the short drama application Hongguo Short Drama App, owned by ByteDance, has launched "Xiaoguo AI." This feature has undergone a period of gray testing and is now officially online, relying on the Doubao large model. It is labeled as Hongguo AI BOT within the app and is positioned as an AI assistant for finding short dramas, providing series search and recommendations. The report states that this is the first time Hongguo has integrated conversational AI into the user-end drama search scenario, beyond AI short drama production.According to practical tests by "Reading Plus," the main entry point is located in the app's search bar. Clicking it leads to the conversation page, and users can also ask questions in the comment section by @XiaoguoAI. The page features quick questions, such as "What short dramas are everyone watching?" and "What are the differences between male-oriented and female-oriented short dramas?" When users input keywords, it returns a list of suggestions, a trending short drama list, and series popularity. The AI responses can pop up short drama cards with play buttons, which redirect to the viewing page when clicked.This tool relies on generative models and search plugins to return information such as titles, plot summaries, poster stills, reputation ratings, and playback channels based on keywords and viewing preferences. From user feedback, it can also record update requests and push notifications when new seasons of followed series are available for reservation.

AI Agent trading project NeoSoul announced today that Alan, former product head at Tencent and ByteDance, has been appointed as Chief Product Officer (CPO), fully responsible for product direction.Alan graduated from Tsinghua University and has worked on AI products at Tencent, ByteDance's TikTok, and SenseTime, with 8 years of Web3 experience. NeoSoul stated that it will continue to invest in product research and development, with a long-term focus on Agentic Trading.

According to a report by Reuters, on October 20, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered over 3 million RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards from NVIDIA, with a unit price of approximately $11,400, totaling over $35 billion. Due to U.S. export controls, this chip does not include the advanced Blackwell architecture and is currently the most powerful compliant NVIDIA chip available for purchase in China.Insiders have indicated that due to demand far exceeding production capacity, NVIDIA has informed partners that it may only be able to fulfill 5% to 10% of orders. Chinese tech companies primarily use this chip for AI inference and post-training model generation. Although its performance is far inferior to the banned B300 and H200 chips, in the context of ongoing computing power shortages and restrictions, the RTX PRO 5500 has become an attractive alternative. Additionally, NVIDIA plans to shift most of TSMC's capacity to the new generation Rubin products starting in 2027. Currently, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and NVIDIA have not commented on this.

Liu Xing, the head of public relations at ByteDance, publicly questioned the claim that "over half of China's AI computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," stating that the related data is "somewhat unreliable." He revealed that only about 10% of ByteDance's total computing power is used for training and inference of video generation models, and this percentage also includes model development, not all of it is used for producing short dramas.The controversy originated from an investor communication record disclosed by Chinese Online in June this year. The company stated that 55% of domestic AI Token consumption comes from short dramas and video generation, 24% is used for e-commerce marketing, and software development accounts for only 15%. After this set of data was circulated, it evolved into the claim that "half of China's computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," leading to discussions such as "the U.S. creates the future, while China creates light-hearted dramas."

According to Bloomberg, ByteDance is close to reaching an agreement with MediaTek to procure semiconductors for data centers. Sources familiar with the matter say that the Chinese social media company is in deep discussions with MediaTek regarding the supply of custom chips, which will be used to operate ByteDance's data centers.Sources indicate that MediaTek will provide an unspecified number of application-specific integrated circuits, which are chips customized for the client's platform. If the deal is finalized, ByteDance could become MediaTek's second-largest customer for such chips after Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and it would help the Taiwanese chipmaker compete with Qualcomm. Due to the private nature of the arrangements, the sources requested anonymity.

According to reports from Major Factory Daily, ByteDance released a company-wide letter on October 13, initiating a new round of stock option repurchases, with a pre-tax repurchase price of $241.35 per share, the same as the price circulated in early September. Participants in this repurchase include former employees, with those who recently left due to business adjustments receiving the same repurchase price per share as current employees, with no discount.According to the company-wide letter, the repurchase amount is calculated based on each granted option. For total package and other types of options, such as those granted upon joining and adjustments to total packages, 50% of the shares that have vested in each batch can be applied for repurchase after vesting, increasing by 10% for each additional year thereafter. For performance-based options granted before January 1, 2026, 100% of the shares that have vested in each batch can be applied for repurchase after vesting; for grants on or after January 1, 2026, 55% can be applied for repurchase after vesting, increasing by 15% for each additional year thereafter. For bonus-based options, 50% of the shares that have vested can be applied for repurchase one year after the first vesting date, and 100% can be applied for repurchase after two years.The company-wide letter also indicated that total package options granted upon joining require approximately 5 years to achieve 100% vesting, while options granted for outstanding performance require about 3 to 4 years to achieve 100% vesting.

ByteDance Seed recently sent an internal email announcing the establishment of the Seed Model-Alignment & Preparedness department, which will be led by Yan Lin and report to Seed head Wu Yonghui. Members of the original Responsible AI team and some members of the Chat team will transition to the new department.The department aims to strengthen investments in safety and alignment. The core of alignment is to ensure that model behavior is consistent with human intentions and safety constraints, in order to enhance the safety capabilities of Agent Models and prevent risks from cutting-edge capabilities such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.

According to Dongcha news, the former head of ByteDance's AI programming tool TRAE, Shi Yang, has reportedly left the company before the National Day holiday. The news states that he plans to start a business with ByteDance's former head of AI data and security, Fu Yue, focusing on AI office solutions. This project is said to have completed its first round of financing, with a valuation of approximately 200 million USD; the company name, financing amount, and investors have not yet been disclosed.Shi Yang's LinkedIn profile shows that his tenure at ByteDance ended in September, and his new job is marked as a startup project with an undisclosed identity. He joined ByteDance in 2024 and was responsible for Doubao MarsCode and TRAE, having previously founded the identity management company Yufu Technology, which was later acquired by Tencent.Fu Yue was responsible for ByteDance's AI training data business and was reported to have left in August. In August of the same year, TRAE and the Kouzi team were merged into the Doubao system, with the relevant product teams reporting to Doubao head Zhao Qi. On October 9, TRAE announced the merger of TraeWork and TraeCode into a single product.

The semiconductor research organization SemiAnalysis released a survey on Chinese data centers, tracking over 1,000 facilities from more than 60 operators. The report estimates that by the end of 2026, China's data center capacity will exceed 24GW, second only to the United States' 56GW. ByteDance accounts for nearly one-fifth of this, making it the largest data center tenant in the country.ByteDance has leased over 4GW of data center capacity, with suppliers including Qinhuai Data, China United Network Communications, and Century Internet. The report states that by early 2026, ByteDance will still contribute about 90% of Qinhuai Data's revenue. ByteDance has also begun to accelerate its self-built data centers, constructing large facilities in Shanxi, Anhui, and Inner Mongolia to reduce reliance on external suppliers.The report also mentions that while Chinese data centers have long been considered to have a high vacancy rate, AI server rooms are still in short supply. This is due to many old server rooms lacking sufficient power supply and cooling capabilities, making it difficult to directly deploy high-power AI servers, while newly built large AI data centers are quickly being rented out. For example, a 100MW data center, excluding IT equipment such as servers, has a construction cost of about $300 million in China and about $1.5 billion in the United States, with Chinese facilities of the same scale typically delivered in about 12 months. Compared to the power supply and approval issues faced by the United States, the more prominent bottleneck for expanding AI data centers in China is the supply of advanced chips.

According to a report by Phoenix Technology citing Bloomberg, former ByteDance intern Tian Keyu has secured nearly $30 million in funding from firms such as Five Sources Capital and IDG Capital, with a post-investment valuation of $200 million. The funds will be used for a startup that is still in stealth mode, competing in the field of world models against AI researchers like Fei-Fei Li.In 2024, during his internship at ByteDance, Tian Keyu was accused of disrupting model training and causing resource waste by writing and altering code due to dissatisfaction with team resource allocation. ByteDance filed a lawsuit seeking 8 million yuan in damages and stated that the intern had been dismissed, while also claiming that online reports of "involving over 8,000 cards and losses exceeding tens of millions of dollars" were grossly exaggerated. The court ruled that Tian Keyu must pay 500,000 yuan for breach of contract and confiscated his entire salary. Tian Keyu stated that he had closed another intern's program to free up computing power, admitted to inappropriate behavior, but described it as "acting on behalf of justice," and expressed that he would take a wiser approach if given another chance.Tian Keyu completed his master's degree at Peking University last summer and is the first author of one of the best papers at NeurIPS 2024. His lab currently has no name or products, with a team of about 10 people, including other former ByteDance employees. He claims to have created a dictionary containing about 200,000 symbols that are unrecognizable to humans for processing videos and plans to input 100 million hours of video into the model, stating that this technology could reduce the cost of generating one second of video by at least an order of magnitude, with plans to showcase it through offline events before the full model release in 2027. As of the time of publication, a ByteDance spokesperson had not responded to inquiries about the dismissal, while representatives from Five Sources Capital and IDG Capital confirmed the investment but did not comment further.

On September 30, according to Yicai, Doubao, a subsidiary of ByteDance, announced that users can complete travel needs such as flight bookings, train ticket purchases, ride-hailing, and route navigation through Doubao. Users only need to describe their needs in natural language, such as "Help me book a flight from Beijing to Shanghai tomorrow" or "Call a car to Capital Airport," and Doubao can recognize the intent and invoke the corresponding services without switching between multiple applications.In terms of cooperation, Doubao collaborates with Flight Butler and High-speed Rail Butler to support flight inquiries, price comparisons, online bookings, and order management; it partners with ride-hailing platforms like Caocao Travel, and collaborates with navigation platforms like Baidu Maps. This news was reported by journalist Lü Qian, edited by Yu Jian.

Reuters quoted The Information's report stating that the Chinese government has signaled that it may allow some domestic companies, such as ByteDance and Alibaba, to purchase chips from Nvidia designed for high-end professional computers. The Information cited two informed sources saying that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently requested companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, to report their plans to purchase Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 chips and informed some companies that the government intends to approve these purchases.Some industry executives expect that the RTX PRO 5500 could bypass U.S. export restrictions. Reuters stated that it could not immediately verify the above report. A spokesperson for Nvidia responded that U.S. companies are still subject to outdated U.S. export controls as well as China's import restrictions on the U.S., with the relevant export controls covering gaming products released nearly five years ago. Alibaba and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Reuters was also unable to reach the Chinese government for comment.

According to reports from the investment community, ByteDance has hired former Coatue China head Kai Jiang to join its financial investment team based in Hong Kong, reporting to ByteDance CFO Gao Zhun. Kai Jiang previously led investments in Asian technology and consumer sectors at Coatue, participating in projects such as Zhiye Bang, Kuaikan Manhua, and CertiK.The report states that ByteDance's financial investment business has not been interrupted but will shift towards a more prudent approach, focusing on returns and core sectors. Recently, ByteDance has invested in companies such as Shengshu Technology, Yingmou Technology, and Ziwenti Robot, covering areas like embodied intelligence, AI infrastructure, and 3D generation. This move is seen as a watershed moment for ByteDance to reactivate its external investments in the AI era.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become the richest person in Asia for the first time with a net worth of over $105 billion, surpassing Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.At 43 years old, Zhang Yiming's wealth has increased eightfold from $13 billion when Bloomberg began tracking in March 2019. He previously faced a regulatory battle that nearly led to TikTok being banned in the United States.

According to foreign media reports, due to increased investment in the field of artificial intelligence, ByteDance's net profit in the first half of 2026 decreased year-on-year, with the net profit margin dropping to approximately 16.7%. During the same period, revenue grew by 30% year-on-year, and the proportion of overseas revenue reached a new high. ByteDance did not comment on the above data.Earlier reports indicated that ByteDance's net profit margin for 2023 was 26%, and for 2024 it is expected to be 21%. Douyin still contributes the majority of revenue, but overseas revenue from TikTok has accounted for over 30% of total revenue. In 2025, overseas revenue is expected to grow by nearly 50%, while domestic revenue is about 20%, with the overseas proportion rising from 25% in 2024 to over 30%.The report stated that ByteDance has independently developed large language models and video models, operates Doubao, and expands its AI cloud business, with the Seedance video generation model being in the top tier of the global AI video market. The company recently obtained approximately $30 billion in loans from banks. Alibaba is seeking to raise about $10 billion through a stock placement, while Zhipu AI is launching a total of $5 billion in equity and convertible bond issuance.