TikTok owner ByteDance hires prominent talent from start-ups in long-term commitment to AI

The new hires come as the company pursues long-term plans to enhance GenAI research, as early efforts begin to pay off

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ByteDance is pursuing a long-term strategy on LLM research. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:30pm, 28 Aug 2024

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, is furthering plans to boost its research capabilities in large language models (LLMs), the technology used to develop generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, as the firm’s recent efforts begin to bear fruit.

The company has added at least two prominent AI experts to its technology team focused on language and graphics model development.

Huang Wenhao, a Microsoft alumnus, last worked as vice-president at 01.AI, a GenAI start-up founded by venture capitalist and former Google China president Lee Kai-fu. The other new hire, Qin Yujia, was the founder and chief executive of start-up Seq-AI. Qin graduated with a PhD from Tsinghua University, where he focused on LLMs under his adviser Liu Zhiyuan, who co-founded the AI start-up ModelBest in 2022.

ByteDance has drawn up long-term plans to enhance LLM-related research, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media. But the person added that the company has no current plans to form an independent LLM research organisation, contrary to earlier Chinese media reports.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The Beijing-based company has elevated GenAI as one of its priorities since US start-up OpenAI shook the tech world with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.