Gu Quanquan Leaves ByteDance Seed Team, Led SeedFold and Seed2.0 Training System

Gu Quanquan, a key researcher within ByteDance’s Seed team, has officially announced his resignation. On social media, Gu marked his final day with the team, reflecting on three years of work in AI-driven drug discovery and large language model pretraining. This exit highlights the growing interest in AI for Science (AI4S) startups as ByteDance accelerates the commercialization of its AI initiatives.
In the realm of AI for drug development, Gu led the creation of SeedFold, a bio-molecular structure prediction model that surpassed AlphaFold3 in several public benchmarks. He also introduced SeedProteo, a protein binder design model, and the DPLIV series of protein language models, advancing AI applications in protein design and pharmaceutical research. By early 2025, Gu shifted his focus to large language model pretraining, establishing an optimization and expansion team to build scalable infrastructure for training large-scale models like Seed2.0.
When asked about Gu’s departure and future plans, a ByteDance Seed team representative clarified that while Gu contributed to bio-molecular structure prediction and LLM pretraining, he was not the head of either AI drug development or pretraining divisions, and the company is unaware of any entrepreneurial ventures. Nevertheless, industry insiders predict Gu will likely join the AI4S startup sector, focusing on AI-driven drug discovery, protein design, and drug development platforms, with leading investment firms already showing interest.
Related article
Google Unveils Pics, a Generative AI Image Tool Rivaling Canva and Adobe Express
Google has officially entered the generative creative design field, launching a new image generation and editing tool called Google Pics. This tool, part of the Google Workspace office suite, is directly targeted at enterprise customers and advanced
How to watch Jensen Huang’s Nvidia GTC 2026 keynote
Nvidia launches its annual GTC developer conference in San Jose, California, next week, with CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote set for Monday at 11am PT / 2pm ET.GTC, short for GPU Technology Conference, serves as Nvidia’s premier annual event, where the se
Bluesky expands AI-powered Attie app to let anyone build websites, games, and more
Bluesky, the open social network, is extending its reach beyond its core application. During TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on Thursday, the company unveiled a new tool empowering creators to design websites, quizzes, games, polls, and other interactive exp
Related Special Topic Recommendations
Comments (0)
0/500

Gu Quanquan, a key researcher within ByteDance’s Seed team, has officially announced his resignation. On social media, Gu marked his final day with the team, reflecting on three years of work in AI-driven drug discovery and large language model pretraining. This exit highlights the growing interest in AI for Science (AI4S) startups as ByteDance accelerates the commercialization of its AI initiatives.
In the realm of AI for drug development, Gu led the creation of SeedFold, a bio-molecular structure prediction model that surpassed AlphaFold3 in several public benchmarks. He also introduced SeedProteo, a protein binder design model, and the DPLIV series of protein language models, advancing AI applications in protein design and pharmaceutical research. By early 2025, Gu shifted his focus to large language model pretraining, establishing an optimization and expansion team to build scalable infrastructure for training large-scale models like Seed2.0.
When asked about Gu’s departure and future plans, a ByteDance Seed team representative clarified that while Gu contributed to bio-molecular structure prediction and LLM pretraining, he was not the head of either AI drug development or pretraining divisions, and the company is unaware of any entrepreneurial ventures. Nevertheless, industry insiders predict Gu will likely join the AI4S startup sector, focusing on AI-driven drug discovery, protein design, and drug development platforms, with leading investment firms already showing interest.
Google Unveils Pics, a Generative AI Image Tool Rivaling Canva and Adobe Express
Google has officially entered the generative creative design field, launching a new image generation and editing tool called Google Pics. This tool, part of the Google Workspace office suite, is directly targeted at enterprise customers and advanced
How to watch Jensen Huang’s Nvidia GTC 2026 keynote
Nvidia launches its annual GTC developer conference in San Jose, California, next week, with CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote set for Monday at 11am PT / 2pm ET.GTC, short for GPU Technology Conference, serves as Nvidia’s premier annual event, where the se
Bluesky expands AI-powered Attie app to let anyone build websites, games, and more
Bluesky, the open social network, is extending its reach beyond its core application. During TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on Thursday, the company unveiled a new tool empowering creators to design websites, quizzes, games, polls, and other interactive exp





Home






