ByteDance’s co-founder Zhang Yiming reportedly told the company’s AI team at an internal all-hands that they’re still behind the US labs, and that reaching the frontier means 2029 or 2030 at the earliest.
Meanwhile their Seedance video models are already a business: Seedance 2.5 Flash was announced Nov 12, ByteDance says it’s 2× faster, it’s about a third cheaper than 2.5, and the API opens Nov 15. Reports put Seedance around $2B ARR, but that’s unconfirmed and ByteDance’s cloud arm says outside figures are overestimated.
Do you think they close the gap before 2029?
Sources: Bloomberg (via Quartz, Nov 2026), Volcano Engine / BytePlus announcements, 36Kr.