ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is building a large in-house AI research team of about 2,000 people and pursuing independent model development without borrowing or compressing technology from rival labs.
Founder Zhang Yiming has told the team to focus on achieving world-leading capabilities over time rather than rushing to catch up in the near term.
The strategy reflects ByteDance's aggressive three-year AI investment campaign and its belief that proprietary development is the only path to models that outperform competitors.
What happened
ByteDance's Seed model development team, led by former Google DeepMind scientist Wu Yonghui and comprising about 2,000 members across China and overseas, is pursuing independent AI model development without relying on distillation (compressing knowledge from other labs' models). Founder Zhang Yiming told the team two weeks ago to target "world-leading model capabilities" in the long run without worrying about near-term competitive gaps.
Why it matters
ByteDance has invested in AI more aggressively than any other Chinese tech giant over the past three years, building data centers and expanding its cloud unit Volcano Engine. Its consumer model Doubao is the most popular in China with 324 million monthly active users, and its SeeDance video-generation model ranks among the most advanced globally. This independent approach suggests ByteDance believes only developing models from scratch—rather than adapting rivals' work—can produce genuinely superior systems.
What to watch
ByteDance's management acknowledges this strategy may cause slower near-term development versus competitors but is betting on long-term capability leadership. The company also has ambitions to develop custom AI chips, which could further reduce reliance on external technology.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is pursuing an ambitious and unconventional strategy to develop AI models that rival the world's most advanced systems. The company's Seed model development team, led by Wu Yonghui (a former scientist at Google DeepMind), now comprises about 2,000 members distributed across China and overseas. This team includes core researchers, infrastructure engineers, a dedicated data labeling team, and translators—a structure designed to support independent, end-to-end model development.
What sets ByteDance apart from many competitors is its deliberate rejection of model distillation, a common technique in which companies train smaller, faster models by copying the knowledge and outputs of larger models developed by other labs. Instead, ByteDance has committed to building all its models from the ground up, a practice it has maintained for more than a year. According to people familiar with the company's work, this independent approach may have slowed development compared to rivals, but ByteDance's leadership believes it is the only path to models that genuinely outperform competitors. Founder Zhang Yiming reinforced this commitment in an internal meeting two weeks ago, telling the Seed team to focus on achieving "world-leading model capabilities" in the long run without worrying excessively about falling behind in the near term.
ByteDance's AI investments already bear commercial fruit. Its consumer-facing model Doubao is the most popular AI assistant in China with 324 million monthly active users, and its SeeDance model ranks among the most advanced globally for video generation. Over the past three years, ByteDance has invested in AI more aggressively than any other Chinese technology giant, expanding its network of data centers and hiring top researchers. The company has also doubled down on Volcano Engine, its cloud unit that sells AI solutions to enterprises, and is pursuing development of custom AI chips—all part of a broader strategy to build proprietary technological advantages and reduce reliance on external technology.
ByteDance's approach to AI development diverges sharply from the prevailing industry practice of model distillation, a cost-effective shortcut that has become standard among competitors. By rejecting this faster path, ByteDance is betting that investing heavily in independent research and infrastructure will ultimately yield models with genuinely superior capabilities. This strategy aligns with founder Zhang Yiming's recent directive to the Seed team, which acknowledged the near-term cost of this approach but framed it as necessary for long-term leadership.
The company's three-year investment spree—outpacing other Chinese tech giants in AI spending—has already produced commercially successful models: Doubao's 324 million monthly active users in China represent a significant consumer foothold, and SeeDance's ranking among the most advanced video-generation models globally suggests the independent approach is yielding results. ByteDance's plans to develop custom AI chips further underscore its commitment to reducing dependency on external technology and building proprietary competitive advantages.
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