ByteDance's Seed Team Loses 70 Staff in One Year, Nearly 30 Join Tencent

Over the past year, ByteDance's Seed team has seen nearly 70 technical employees depart, with many joining leading domestic internet companies, large model firms, and international tech giants. Reports indicate that former ByteDance employees are particularly sought after in the venture capital market, with over 30 AI startups founded by ex-staff securing funding. These companies operate in areas such as AI agents, multimodal content creation, embodied intelligence, and AI hardware, directly competing with ByteDance.

In the last year, ByteDance's Seed team has become a primary target for talent recruitment by major domestic tech firms. Close to 30 members have moved to Tencent, where they are engaged in AI infrastructure and data infrastructure development. Additionally, Ge Hao, a former top intern in ByteDance's Seed program, has joined Alibaba's Qwen team and is a core member responsible for reinforcement learning infrastructure training for the Qwen model.

ByteDance established the Seed team in 2023, focusing on research areas including large language models, speech, vision, world models, foundational architecture, AI infrastructure, and next-generation AI interaction. The team has developed the Doubao large model, which currently supports more than 50 application scenarios, including Doubao, Kouzi, and Jimeng.

In September 2025, it was reported that ByteDance granted equity allowances to employees in its Seed department, primarily targeting technical staff working on large model development. Depending on comprehensive performance and job level, employees receive monthly ByteDance stock options valued at 90,000, 110,000, or 135,000 yuan, vested monthly, with the first round of allowances distributed over an 18-month period.