ByteDance prepares an AI agent for release in weeks, Bloomberg reports
ByteDance is to release an AI agent of the Muse-type in weeks, but its co-founder tells staff it is far from the top until 2029.
Bloomberg reports that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is to release an AI agent of the Muse-type in the next weeks. Persons at a last meeting of the AI team told Bloomberg. There, co-founder Zhang Yiming told staff that ByteDance can compete with Anthropic and OpenAI at the top, but not before 2029 or 2030.
How it works
Muse is an agent that speaks, with an avatar. Meta made it in September 2026. It is on smart glasses and on a gadget that is not for sale at this time. Bloomberg tells that it is not clear if ByteDance has hardware plans.
The numbers
ByteDance did not answer Bloomberg. These facts come from the report:
- The Seed models learn from data sets that are much less than those of top rivals.
- The Seed team has about 1,000 researchers and engineers.
- ByteDance is prepared to spend a maximum of $70B on AI infrastructure.
What is not known
The release date, the name and the hardware plan are not known. Zhang again told staff not to use distillation. This is training on the output of a different model. White House officials and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei criticized other Chinese labs for it.
Insight: ByteDance copies a hit and admits a long gap
ByteDance leads in video with its Seedance models. Its Seed models are not at the top of the benchmarks. Meta told in October 2026 that Muse has more than 10 million users. ByteDance seems to copy a shown agent to get users at this time, while it knows the model gap will last years. Look for a sales function in the ByteDance agent.
Sources
Posted
