ByteDance - Asia Tech Wire

ByteDance

2025.01.26

08:07

Will "Honor of Kings" face its strongest rival this Spring Festival?

Recently, the MOBA game "Winning Peak" developed by ByteDance's subsidiary Moonton Technology was officially launched in China. This slogan that appeared in the official video was seen as a direct challenge to "Honor of Kings". Not only that, "Winning Peak" also promised not to carry out strategies such as "matching manipulation" or "streak of wins and losing streaks" during its promotion, which directly hit the pain points of "Honor of Kings". On the eve of the Spring Festival, the two sides were already on the verge of a fight, and successively dominated the free list and the total list of IOS in the Apple Store. Many industry insiders believe that the arrival of "Winning Peak" in China is an important step for ByteDance to penetrate into Tencent's hinterland, and it may even stir up the situation of "one dominant company" in the domestic MOBA field.

2025.01.23

19:23

Capital expenditures in 2025 will exceed 150 billion yuan? ByteDance: The information is false

On January 23, a media reported that ByteDance's capital expenditure in 2025 will exceed 150 billion yuan, mainly for artificial intelligence. A ByteDance official told reporters that the information was untrue.

16:32

ByteDance's capital expenditure in 2025 will exceed 150 billion yuan, mainly for artificial intelligence

ByteDance's capital expenditure in 2025 will exceed 150 billion yuan, mainly used for artificial intelligence.

16:32

Source: ByteDance's capital expenditure in 2025 will exceed 150 billion yuan, mainly used for artificial intelligence, and the main beneficiaries will be Nvidia, Huawei and Cambrian.

12:43

ByteDance launches long-term AGI research plan, with computing resources managed separately

On January 23, ByteDance's Doubao Big Model team has formed an internal long-term AGI research team, codenamed "Seed Edge", to encourage project members to explore longer-term, uncertain and bold AGI research topics. In the code name, Seed is the name of the Doubao Big Model team, and Edge represents the most cutting-edge AGI exploration. The team encourages cross-modal and cross-team collaboration, provides a relaxed research environment, adopts a longer-term assessment method, and will also receive separate computing power resources. At present, Seed Edge has preliminarily identified five major research directions: exploring the boundaries of reasoning capabilities, the boundaries of perception capabilities, the design of the next-generation model with integrated hardware and software, the next-generation AI learning paradigm, and the next Scaling direction.

09:15

ByteDance launches Seed Edge to increase investment in AGI research

In the second half of 2024, there were rumors in the market that ByteDance was planning to build a "Big Model Research Institute". Subsequently, ByteDance responded: "There is a long-term plan to strengthen research related to big models, but it has not decided to establish an independent organization." We learned that recently, ByteDance's AGI research team finally surfaced: In late January, ByteDance officially established a research project code-named "Seed Edge". The core goal is to do AGI frontier research that is longer-term and more basic than pre-training and big model iteration. Seed Edge has formulated five major research directions. AI is the technology and business direction that ByteDance currently values most. People close to ByteDance told us that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming attaches great importance to and emphasizes strengthening investment in AI research. He will read papers and key technical details himself, chat and communicate with first-class AI researchers, and encourage ByteDance AI research teams to explore and study basic topics. It is understood that ByteDance has been planning to establish a research organization for a long time. But after forming a feasible plan, it took only one week for internal communication and solicitation of opinions. People close to ByteDance said that in the face of AI changes: "ByteDance is the most daring of large Chinese companies to adjust, and it moves very quickly."

2025.01.22

22:15

ByteDance director: TikTok transaction will be completed, and a feasible solution will be reached as early as this weekend

Bill Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, a major investor in ByteDance, said at an event in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday that a deal would be reached to ensure TikTok can continue to be used in the U.S. General Atlantic is a major investor in ByteDance, where Ford sits on the board.

17:38

After the price of one million tokens dropped to 0.8 yuan, the gross profit margin of the Doubao model has reached 50%

It was learned from multiple informed sources that after the Doubao large model was significantly reduced in price last year, the gross profit margin is still positive. Among them, ByteDance’s latest Doubao large model 1.5 has made further breakthroughs in inference cost optimization. Doubao-1.5-pro, which sells APIs on Volcano Engine, can still achieve a gross profit margin of 50%. In May last year, ByteDance officially released the Doubao large model. Among them, the Doubao general model pro-32k version has a model inference input price of only 0.8 yuan per million tokens, while the pricing of the same specification model on the market at that time was generally 120 yuan per million tokens, which is 150 times the price of the Doubao model.

2025.01.21

14:46

ByteDance founder reportedly met with Musk last year

Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok's parent company ByteDance, met with Elon Musk, a U.S. billionaire and close confidant of President Donald Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:23

Douyin's (planned) investment in computing centers has exceeded 18 billion yuan in the past six months

According to incomplete statistics, in the past six months, Douyin Group's (planned) investment in the construction of a computing center has exceeded 18 billion yuan. According to the announcement of the Wuhu District Management Committee of Anhui Free Trade Zone on January 17, Wuhu Jiangdong Mingyi Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Douyin Group (ByteDance), plans to build the "Volcano Engine Yangtze River Delta Computing Center Project" in Wuhu, Anhui. The project's environmental impact assessment documents have been accepted recently and are being implemented for pre-approval publicity. The total investment of the project is 8 billion yuan, with a designed number of server cabinets of 21,824, 236 network cabinets, and a substation.

2025.01.20

21:39

According to the Wall Street Journal: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming met with Tesla CEO Musk in 2024.

17:48

Douyin's company applies for trademark for AI programming tool Trae

According to Tianyancha's intellectual property information, Beijing Gravity Slingshot Technology Co., Ltd. recently applied to register two "Trae" trademarks, with international classifications of scientific instruments and website services. The current trademark status is both awaiting substantive review. Beijing Gravity Slingshot Technology Co., Ltd. was established in March 2024. Its legal representative is Lin Landong, with a registered capital of RMB 1 million. It is wholly owned by Beijing Xingyun Chuangji Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Douyin Co., Ltd. Trae is an AI programming tool launched by ByteDance for overseas markets.

17:01

ByteDance launches AI programming tool Trae for overseas markets

Chinese technology company ByteDance on Sunday launched Trae, an AI programming tool for overseas markets.

13:44

Perplexity proposes to merge with Tiktok's U.S. business

U.S. artificial intelligence startup Perplexity is said to be proposing a merger with Tiktok's U.S. operations.

2025.01.19

17:40

China's AIGC APP monthly active users exceed 100 million, Doubao alone accounts for half

The users of China's AIGC APP are gathering at the top. According to the research organization QuestMobile, by the end of November 2024, the total number of monthly active users of China's AIGC APP will exceed 100 million. Doubao, owned by ByteDance, has taken a steep upward curve. Kimi Smart Assistant, the dark side of the moon, has more than 10 million monthly active users, and Baidu's Wen Xiaoyan has slowed down and ranked third. Kimi Smart Assistant is a new player with 10 million monthly active users. It had only 4.59 million monthly active users at the end of June. Since October, its number of monthly active users has exceeded Wen Xiaoyan, reaching about 22 million in November. Doubao has grown more rapidly than Kimi Smart Assistant. The latter has taken a steep upward curve in the first half of 2024, with about 56 million monthly active users in November, doubling the 27.51 million monthly active users at the end of June. As of November 2024, Baidu Wen Xiaoyan's monthly active users have basically maintained around 10 million, and the momentum for growth is insufficient. Overall, Doubao has taken up half of the industry's monthly active users, and the trend of dominating the market is obvious. Even Kimi Smart Assistant and Wen Xiaoyan, which are in the first echelon, are also seeing a widening gap in monthly active data between them and Doubao.

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