ByteDance launches Doubao 2.0 AI model ahead of Lunar New Year

China’s ByteDance has unveiled Doubao 2.0, an upgraded version of the country’s most widely used AI app, positioning the company for what it calls the “agent era” — where AI models execute complex, real-world tasks rather than simply answering questions. 

The announcement came Saturday, just ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, a period when hundreds of millions of Chinese return home for family gatherings.

ByteDance, known internationally for TikTok, is racing to maintain its edge in the domestic AI market. 

The company’s previous release, Seedance 2.0, a video-generation AI model, went viral on Chinese social media and drew international attention, with praise from tech figures like Elon Musk. 

Doubao 2.0 aims to replicate that success in the AI chatbot space, offering multi-step reasoning and task execution comparable to OpenAI’s GPT 5.2 and Google’s Gemini 3 Pro — but at roughly one-tenth the cost, according to ByteDance.

Doubao currently leads China’s AI chatbot market with 155 million weekly active users, compared to DeepSeek’s 81.6 million, per QuestMobile. 

The cost advantages of Doubao 2.0 could prove critical as AI adoption expands into increasingly complex real-world applications that demand significant computational resources.

The release also comes amid mounting competition. Alibaba recently spent 3 billion yuan ($400 million) on a campaign promoting its Qwen AI app, boosting daily active users from 7 million to 58 million — narrowly trailing Doubao’s figures. 

By launching Doubao 2.0 ahead of new DeepSeek updates, ByteDance aims to maintain market dominance both domestically and internationally.