ByteDance launches new AI model to counter DeepSeek's success
What's the story
ByteDance has launched Doubao 2.0, an upgraded version of its popular artificial intelligence (AI) model. The move comes as part of a strategy by several Chinese companies to create a buzz around their new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday. The company was caught off-guard by DeepSeek's sudden global success last year, when Silicon Valley and investors were surprised by a Chinese firm's ability to develop an AI model comparable to OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost.
Strategic launch
ByteDance aims to avoid being outdone again
The launch of Doubao 2.0, ahead of a highly anticipated new DeepSeek model, is likely a strategic move by ByteDance to avoid being outdone again. The company's video-generation AI model Seedance 2.0 was released on Thursday and has already been compared with DeepSeek's success last year, after going viral on Chinese social media and receiving international acclaim on platforms like X.
Advanced features
Doubao 2.0 positioned for 'agent era'
ByteDance has positioned Doubao 2.0 for the "agent era," where AI models are expected to perform real-world tasks instead of just answering questions. The pro version of the model comes with advanced reasoning and multi-step task execution capabilities that rival OpenAI's GPT 5.2 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro, while cutting usage costs by about 10 times. ByteDance said this cost advantage will be important as real-world complex tasks involve large-scale inference and multi-step generation that consume a lot of tokens.
Market position
Doubao leads all AI chatbot apps in China
According to data from QuestMobile, Doubao leads all AI chatbot apps in China with 155 million weekly active users. DeepSeek comes second with 81.6 million users. The release of Doubao 2.0 could help ByteDance counter recent pressure from domestic competitors like Alibaba, which recently launched a coupon giveaway campaign to attract more users to its Qwen AI app.