ByteDance's Doubao 2.0 takes on OpenAI's GPT-5, Google's Gemini-3 Pro
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, just dropped Doubao 2.0—its upgraded AI chatbot—on February 14.
The new version is built to handle tough real-world tasks and is said to rival OpenAI's GPT 5.2 and Google's Gemini-3 Pro in reasoning and multi-step problem-solving.
Doubao 2.0 can code, solve math problems, and handle business tasks
Doubao 2.0 stands out for its skills in processing different types of content, solving math problems, coding, and handling business tasks.
It also remembers more of your conversation thanks to a longer context window—and ByteDance says it reduces inference/usage costs by about an order of magnitude compared with industry-leading rivals.
Doubao had over 155 million weekly active users in January
The Doubao app had 155 million weekly active users as of late December 2025, leaving competitors like DeepSeek (81.6 million users) far behind.
Its launch follows a big surge in users for Alibaba's Qwen chatbot earlier this month.
Legal troubles for ByteDance over AI model Seedance
While celebrating Doubao's success, ByteDance is also facing legal trouble over its other AI model, Seedance 2.0—Disney has hit them with a cease-and-desist over copyright concerns.
Still, launching Doubao 2.0 marks a major step forward for ByteDance in the AI race.