ByteDance set to undergo AI restructure amid DeepSeek pressure

ByteDance is set to undergo a restructuring of its artificial intelligence (AI) department, bringing an expert from Google to help its overhaul. According to some of its employees, the former Google employee Wu Yonghui will lead the company’s foundation research.

Wu Yonghui, who worked with Google for 17 years, will join up with the Seed department at ByteDance. The Seed department was launched in 2023, after the success of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence model created by OpenAI. According to reports, Yonghui will report to CEO Liang Rubo directly instead of reporting to the head of the Seed department Zhu Wenjia.

According to the reports, Yonghui will hold a high executive role in the department, as several team leaders have been instructed to now report to her instead of Wenjia. In line with its vision to restructure its AI department, the head of research and director at the company’s AI Lab Li Hang will also report to the recruit.

ByteDance recruits Google Fellow in AI department revamp

As part of its restructuring, the executive that was in charge of applied machine learning who oversaw the development of the company’s large language model, Double, Xiang Liang, will also report to the new Seed executive. The changes are coming after the pressure that fellow Chinese company DeepSeek has put most tech firms under due to the release of its models.

While ByteDance remains China’s most valuable unicorn, it looks like the company’s position is being threatened. DeepSeek has enjoyed media attention over the last few weeks, triggering a nationwide frenzy. Alongside the frenzy, the company’s AI chatbot has been gradually replacing that of ByteDance in most of the applications for consumers. According to QuestMobile, the daily active users of DeepSeek have also surpassed Doubao’s in a late January survey.

After DeepSeek burst into the limelight due to the capabilities of its AI models, its open-source strategy, and its low cost of operation, the company’s website and applications have received more than 100 million visits. According to AI tracker Alcpb, the feat is remarkable, because it took fellow AI rival ChatGPT two months and TikTok nine months to reach that level of popularity.

Departmental restructuring amid DeepSeek pressures

According to reports, the co-founder of the AI startup 01.ai, who joined ByteDance in 2024, will now also report to Yonghui. The company was launched by former Google head in China Lee Kai-fu in 2023, off the back of an investment spree in generative AI technology in the country. Reports in China have noted that Wenjia is still with the Seed department, but will take up a role in technology application, while Yonghui will be responsible for basic research.

Other departments at the company will also be undergoing restructuring, with the trust and safety team, who are in charge of the platform policy and content moderation, also seeing personnel changes. In a report by Reuters, ByteDance has been notifying employees in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the United States about impending job cuts since Thursday.

It remains unclear how many employees ByteDance plans to axe, with sources noting that some people’s company accounts were shut down an hour after the memo release. While ByteDance is yet to confirm, it remains to be seen the number of staff affected and their locations, considering the job cuts are happening globally.

In an internal staff meeting last week, the company CEO Liang Rubo mentioned that DeepSeek did not invent the chain-of-thought method used for reasoning in models like the DeepSeek-R1. OpenAI had previously launched the Open o1 model that carries out a long internal chain of thought before responding to queries. According to the Chinese media, the CEO mentioned that it saw a change in technical direction in the AI space after OpenAI released the o1, but it was not fast enough to follow up.

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