ByteDance Raises Doubao AI Virtual Stock Price to $17.02 to Retain Talent
ByteDance has reportedly raised the internal virtual stock price of its Doubao AI division by 14.6% to $17.02 per share, up from $14.85 in June. Additionally, the company introduced a policy allowing eligible employees to convert a portion of their cash salary into these virtual shares. This move highlights the intense competition for AI talent in China, prompting tech giants to use creative equity-like incentives to retain key researchers. By tying compensation directly to the AI division's valuation, ByteDance aims to align employee interests with its long-term AI goals. The virtual stock program, known as the "Doubao Long-term Incentive Plan," is restricted to specific teams, including the Seed AI department (working on pre-training and Vision-Language Models), the Flow department (Doubao app), and the Volcano Ark platform. Employees can opt to convert 20% to 30% of their total compensation package from cash into Doubao shares depending on their job level.
## BACKGROUND
ByteDance's Seed team, established in 2023, focuses on general intelligence, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) that process both text and visual data. Volcano Ark is ByteDance's Volcano Engine model service platform that provides Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions to enterprises, hosting models like Doubao.