ByteDance AI Research Leader Gu Quanquan Announces Departure
Gu Quanquan, who led foundational AI research at ByteDance and helped release the Seed 2.0 model, said he is leaving the company. The move comes as ByteDance expands monetization efforts for its consumer AI products.
South China Morning PostGu Quanquan, an associate professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, announced his departure from ByteDance on social media Tuesday. Gu joined ByteDance in 2023 to oversee AI-for-science research focused on drug discovery. In March 2025 he shifted to co-lead model pre-training and scaling after DeepSeek’s breakthrough prompted increased domestic competition.
Gu helped oversee the release of ByteDance’s flagship AI model Seed 2.0 earlier this year. The model powers Doubao, the company’s consumer AI app that reports approximately 336 million monthly active users. Doubao integrates Seed 2.0 and Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s video-generation model.
ByteDance has begun offering subscription plans for Doubao as part of broader efforts to generate revenue from its AI products. Gu’s post thanked colleagues and leadership for “an incredibly rewarding journey” but did not disclose his next position.
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