Daily average of 30 trillion Tokens! The comeback of "Doubao"

ByteDance's large model application "Doubao" is achieving a dual breakthrough in users and technology at an astonishing speed. Launched in 2023, this AI assistant has surpassed DeepSeek in the fiercely competitive Chinese AI market, becoming the AI application with the most monthly active users, thanks to its differentiated product strategy and ByteDance's traffic distribution capabilities.

On October 16, Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine, disclosed at the FORCE LINK AI Innovation Tour held in Wuhan that the daily Token call volume of the Doubao large model has increased from 120 billion in May last year to 30 trillion in September this year, achieving a 253-fold growth. According to an IDC report, in the first half of this year, Volcano Engine ranked first in the call volume of large model services in China's public cloud, with a market share of 49.2%. QuestMobile data shows that as of August, Doubao's monthly active users reached 157 million, surpassing DeepSeek's 143 million.

To lower the cost threshold for enterprises to apply AI, Volcano Engine upgraded the Doubao large model to version 1.6, launching the country's first model that natively supports four levels of thinking length adjustment, and released an intelligent model routing solution. In low-intensity mode, the new version can reduce total output Tokens by 77.5% and deep thinking time by 84.6%. The intelligent routing solution can reduce overall costs by more than 70% in cost-priority mode.

Analysts point out that this turnaround highlights the differences in technological leadership and product capabilities. Doubao, relying on ByteDance's "application factory" experience and deep integration with Douyin, is proving that in the consumer-grade AI market, user experience and distribution capabilities are as important as model performance itself.

Tiered Thinking Solves Cost Dilemma

This upgrade of Doubao directly addresses the core pain point of enterprise AI applications—excessively high inference costs.

The Doubao large model 1.6, released by Volcano Engine in Wuhan, natively supports four thinking lengths: Minimal, Low, Medium, and High, allowing enterprises to flexibly adjust according to different scenario needs.

Tan Dai stated that this is one of the three major trends in the AI field this year— the emergence of deep thinking models—giving rise to this solution.

The Doubao-Seed-1.6, launched in June this year with multimodal understanding capabilities, improved model performance by 31% after entering thinking mode, but in real-time scenarios, the proportion of thinking Tokens exceeded 77%, leading 82% of enterprises to choose not to enable deep thinking mode.

The upgraded Doubao-Seed-1.6-1015 new version can reduce total output Tokens by 77.5% and deep thinking time by 84.6% while maintaining the same effect through tiered adjustment in low-intensity mode.

The simultaneously released Doubao-Seed-1.6-lite model is smaller in size and outperforms the previous Pro version, with total costs reduced by 53% compared to Doubao-Seed-1.5-Pro within the 0-32K context range Volcano Engine has also launched an intelligent model routing solution that supports balanced mode, effect priority mode, and cost priority mode, allowing for automatic selection among the entire series of Doubao models as well as mainstream open-source models like DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi.

User Experience-Driven Differentiated Competition

Doubao's market leadership stems more from its product strategy than purely from technological advantages.

According to technology analyst Poe Zhao, DeepSeek is more like "the first generation of AI applications, similar to early ChatGPT," while Doubao represents China's second-generation AI platform, "integrating richer features, clear visual prompts, and scenario-based guidance, significantly lowering the cognitive threshold for using large models."

Doubao integrates various functions such as chat, image generation, video generation, and custom intelligent agents, most importantly, it is deeply integrated with Douyin.

Douyin users can tag Doubao in video comments to obtain content summaries, and Doubao users can also watch Douyin videos directly within the app. Counterpoint Research's chief AI analyst Wei Sun pointed out:

"This combination of convenience and dopamine, especially for the younger generation, is just enough to trigger sharing. This lightweight, low-threshold user experience is key to driving social sharing and sticky interaction in China."

QuestMobile data shows that as of August, nearly 40% of users leaving DeepSeek turned to Doubao.

Building an Enterprise-Level AI Ecosystem

To promote enterprise AI transformation, Volcano Engine is improving its full-chain solutions from development to deployment.

In terms of Agent development, Volcano Engine has built a "1+N+X" system through the HiAgent platform, which includes one unified interaction entry, N general intelligent assistants for enterprises, and X custom intelligent agent applications for enterprises.

Volcano Engine plans to launch a corporate version of Kousi Space, providing customized Agents, MCP development, data connectors, enterprise knowledge bases, and enterprise-level system management functions to meet personalized enterprise needs.

Reports indicate that ByteDance has collaborated with device OEM manufacturers, including smart glasses manufacturers and automotive manufacturers (including Tesla), to embed Doubao as an in-car assistant or AI companion, expanding Doubao's application range from smartphones and computers to more terminals.

From Technological Competition to Application Implementation

The rise of Doubao reveals a shift in the competitive landscape of China's AI market.

DeepSeek caused a sensation globally in January this year due to its efficient model, but its product remains at the basic text chat stage, lagging in multimodal functionality and user guidance. Dermot McGrath pointed out:

Some users left DeepSeek in search of image generation capabilities or autonomous intelligent agents, while others left because DeepSeek's servers often could not handle traffic In contrast, ByteDance is known as the "application factory" in China, as it regularly launches dozens of new applications for various use cases.

ByteDance has strong capabilities in rapid iteration, quick testing, and traffic diversion between applications. This long-term accumulation in consumer-grade platform development is key to Doubao surpassing the technology-leading but product-experienced DeepSeek.

Silicon Valley's top venture capital firm a16z ranked Doubao as the fourth most popular generative AI application globally in August, following ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

Analysis indicates that this application, which has almost no recognition in the West, is proving with a growth rate of 253 times that in the AI race, technological leadership is just the starting point; product capability and ecosystem integration are the keys to determining market position