At the 2024 all-staff meeting of ByteDance, CEO Liang Rubo delivered a poignant reflection on the organization's management efficiencyHe underscored a pressing need to enhance the awareness of urgency and to escape the gravitational pull of mediocrityThis sentiment encapsulated a growing consensus within the company regarding its approach to innovation and market competition.

Fast forward to the all-staff meeting in 2025, and Liang shifted the focus towards technological dimensions, reviving the concept of "pragmatic romance." This notion, originally proposed by the company’s founder Zhang Yiming during ByteDance’s anniversary celebration in 2019, serves as a rebuttal to external critiques that the company operates with an excessively rational mindset, being labeled merely as “an A/B testing company” or an “app factory.” It seems that ByteDance is attempting to reposition itself as a company that marries analytical rigor with creative inspiration.

Presenting alongside Liang were several high-ranking executives from ByteDance, including Kang Zeyu, the head of the e-commerce division; Zhu Wenjia, overseeing AI technology; and Zhou Shouzi, the CEO of TikTokTheir collective insights demonstrated the multifaceted challenges the company faces in an increasingly competitive landscape.

In light of the rising phenomenon known as DeepSeek, the executives reflected on the team's struggles with speedThis issue had already drawn Liang's ire the previous year, as he pointed out an apparent lack of sensitivity in capitalizing on emerging opportunities related to large models—one of the most talked-about areas in techIn contrast, other innovative startups had been laying the groundwork in the large model domain from 2018 to 2021, while ByteDance’s own discussions regarding leading-edge technologies like GPT had only begun around mid-2023. This sluggishness has placed ByteDance at a disadvantage in the fast-paced tech market.

As for practical application, ByteDance’s efforts in large models were deemed to be lagging, only gaining acclaim in the latter half of 2024. In January 2023, the company established its inaugural large model team, led by the search department with Zhu Wenjia at the helm

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This new team was divided into two smaller units: one group led by the original search department focused on developing a language model, while another from the product research and engineering division was set to tackle image modeling.

Later in 2023, ByteDance created the Flow team, dedicated to AI applications directly under the firm’s AI innovation unit, concentrating on the research and development of applications for large modelsThe leadership structure of this team consisted of Zhu Wenjia as the business head, Hong Dingkun as the technical lead, and Zhu Jun overseeing product development.

By 2024, the acceleration of ByteDance’s initiatives in large models became evidentIn April, Zhu Wenjia got promoted to report directly to CEO Liang Rubo, and his AI team was named “Seed.” In addition to Flow and Seed, ByteDance has other teams focusing on various niches, such as AILab under Li Hang, which emphasizes academic exploration, and Xiang Liang’s team that focuses on Data-AML.

In the latter half of 2024, ByteDance unveiled multiple large model products, triggering interest and activity in the secondary marketAccording to research from Guohai Securities, the new Doubao large model is poised to introduce fresh functionalities and applications, potentially positioning itself as a heavyweight product following ChatGPT’s precedent, and is expected to catalyze rapid growth in the large model sector.

This forecast came true sooner than anticipated; just 21 days following its launch, the DeepSeek APP shattered records with daily active users (DAU) exceeding 20 million, securing the second spot in global daily usage rankings with ChatGPT trailing at 41.6%. It wasn’t long before DeepSeek clinched the top position on the App Store download charts in the U.S. and outperformed ChatGPT in both the Chinese and American App Store free categories.

By January 28, 2025, DeepSeek’s daily active user count outstripped that of Doubao, making it the most widely used domestic model

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