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ByteDance's Seed Team Loses 70 Core Members in a Year, Tencent and Alibaba Main Destinations

According to a report by Jiemian, ByteDance's core AI unit, the Seed team, is experiencing a notable talent drain. Over the past year, nearly 70 technical professionals have left to join major tech companies and AI startups, highlighting the increasingly fierce competition for talent in China's large model sector.
As the backbone of ByteDance's AI research and development, the Seed team—founded in 2023—focuses on cutting-edge fields such as large language models, speech, vision, and world models. Its Douba Large Model powers over 50 applications, including Douba and Kuaizi (Coze).
However, in the past year, the team has become a prime target for talent poaching. Nearly 30 members have moved to Tencent, primarily working on AI infrastructure and data infrastructure; top intern Ge Hao has joined Alibaba's Qwen team, where he is deeply involved in developing reinforcement learning infrastructure.
The talent outflow extends beyond established tech giants, sparking a wave of "ByteDance-style" entrepreneurship in the venture capital market. Currently, over 30 AI startups founded by former ByteDance employees have secured funding, with businesses spanning agents, multimodal creation, and embodied intelligence. Despite ByteDance introducing a generous stock option allowance in September 2025—offering its large model technicians up to 135,000 yuan per month in stock options—in an attempt to retain key talent, the company has been unable to halt the active talent migration amid industry trends.
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According to a report by Jiemian, ByteDance's core AI unit, the Seed team, is experiencing a notable talent drain. Over the past year, nearly 70 technical professionals have left to join major tech companies and AI startups, highlighting the increasingly fierce competition for talent in China's large model sector.
As the backbone of ByteDance's AI research and development, the Seed team—founded in 2023—focuses on cutting-edge fields such as large language models, speech, vision, and world models. Its
However, in the past year, the team has become a prime target for talent poaching. Nearly 30 members have moved to Tencent, primarily working on AI infrastructure and data infrastructure; top intern Ge Hao has joined Alibaba's Qwen team, where he is deeply involved in developing reinforcement learning infrastructure.
The talent outflow extends beyond established tech giants, sparking a wave of "ByteDance-style" entrepreneurship in the venture capital market. Currently, over 30 AI startups founded by former ByteDance employees have secured funding, with businesses spanning agents, multimodal creation, and embodied intelligence. Despite ByteDance introducing a generous stock option allowance in September 2025—offering its large model technicians up to 135,000 yuan per month in stock options—in an attempt to retain key talent, the company has been unable to halt the active talent migration amid industry trends.
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