TikTok owner ByteDance is restructuring its artificial intelligence (AI) department after having poached an expert from Google to lead foundation research, according to employees of the Chinese tech giant.
ByteDance’s Seed department, founded in early 2023 following the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has recruited Wu Yonghui, a “Google Fellow” who worked at the American tech giant for 17 years. Instead of reporting to Seed head Zhu Wenjia, Wu will report directly to company CEO Liang Rubo.
At the same time, several team leaders within Seed, who used to report to Zhu, now report to Wu, including Li Hang, head of research and director of the AI Lab, and Xiang Liang, in charge of applied machine learning who led the development of the company’s Doubao large language model, according to ByteDance employees who have access to internal reporting systems.
The changes come as ByteDance, China’s most valuable unicorn, is under pressure from DeepSeek, which has triggered a nationwide frenzy over AI. In the consumer app space, DeepSeek has replaced Doubao as the most popular AI chatbot for Chinese consumers. DeepSeek’s daily active users surpassed Doubao’s in late January, according to QuestMobile.
After DeepSeek made headlines worldwide for its open source strategy, as well as low cost and high performance, its website and app have amassed 100 million combined visits in just a week. In comparison, it took ChatGPT two months and TikTok nine months to achieve that level of popularity, according to AI app tracker AIcpb.com.
Huang Wenhao, co-founder of AI start-up 01.ai, who joined ByteDance last year, now also reports to Wu, the internal company system showed. 01.ai was established by former Google China head Lee Kai-fu in 2023 amid an investment spree in generative AI technology.
Several Chinese media reported, citing a source close to ByteDance, that Zhu is still with Seed, focusing on the application of the technology, while Wu is mainly responsible for basic research.
