Zhang Yiming makes a rare appearance as big names return to the front lines.

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Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Huang Yu

After a long absence, another internet tycoon has returned to the public eye.

On October 9th, the Shanghai Xuhui Zhichun Innovation Center was officially inaugurated, with ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming attending the launch ceremony and delivering a speech. The institution is designated as a private non-enterprise unit, co-founded by Zhang Yiming and Professor Yu Yong, the founder of the ACM class at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It focuses on cutting-edge research and innovation in computer and artificial intelligence technologies, development of open-source tools and algorithms, and nurturing top innovative talent.

This internet leader, who stepped down as CEO in 2021, has returned to the public stage with a new image after four years of silence. Here, he mainly shared some of his views on talent cultivation.

Zhang Yiming stated: "I have long been focused on talent recruitment and development, and I have noticed that much potential in talent has not been fully tapped. Using the example of overfitting in machine learning models, some talents may have solid professional knowledge and high-precision skills, but when it comes to innovative tasks, they fall short."

Therefore, the Innovation Center aims to cultivate young talents who are active thinkers, passionate, and resilient, encouraging them to think independently, value practical experience, and maintain a long-term perspective.

Zhang Yiming's public appearance means much more than an ordinary unveiling ceremony. This is his first public appearance since stepping down as ByteDance CEO in 2021, and it has attracted widespread attention in the industry.

After stepping down in 2021, Zhang Yiming seemingly stayed away from the spotlight. At the time, in an internal letter, he stated: "I am not a mature manager in the traditional sense, nor am I very adept at socializing. I prefer to study organizational and market principles to reduce management, enjoy surfing the internet, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming."

However, stepping down did not mean completely letting go. He also said at the time that he would "focus relatively more on learning, systematic thinking, exploring new things, hands-on experimentation and experience, and, over a ten-year period, create more possibilities for the company."

Today, with AI as a new variable and an important consideration for the re-evaluation of major internet companies, the "more possibilities for the company" mentioned in Zhang Yiming's letter is also highly linked to AI.

In fact, judging from news in recent years, much of Zhang Yiming's recent attention has focused on the field of AI. Market sources say that after moving back to Beijing from Singapore this year, Zhang Yiming has been regularly participating in Byte's AI core team (Seed) review meetings, directly guiding large model R&D work.

In today's internet landscape disrupted by AI, Byte has always been an important player.

Currently, among the most famous and widely used AI applications, Doubao is certainly on the list. According to QuestMobile's 2025 Spring data, Doubao has over 110 million users, a year-on-year increase of 864.35%, ranking second on the list. By August, Doubao's monthly active users had reached 157 million, surpassing DeepSeek to top the list of China's native AI applications.

Meanwhile, the Doubao large model family keeps evolving. At the "Force Origin Power Conference" held by Volcano Engine on June 11, the Doubao Large Model 1.6 series was officially launched.

Among them, Doubao 1.6 is a comprehensive full-featured model, supporting 256K long context, capable of adaptive thinking; Doubao 1.6-thinking enhances deep reasoning with significantly improved coding, math, and logic abilities, and supports complex agent construction.

At the same event, Byte also released the Doubao video generation model Seedance 1.0 Pro, real-time voice and podcast models, and upgraded its Agent development platform and other AI cloud-native services. At that launch, Byte focused on three areas: performance upgrade, cost reduction, and more accessible applications, to drive AI implementation at this stage.

Besides Doubao, Byte's AI ambitions are expanding, with more long-term projects being initiated—this is also Zhang Yiming's area of focus. In January this year, Byte launched a project codenamed "Seed Edge," with the core purpose of conducting frontier AGI research that is more long-term and fundamental than pre-training and large model iterations.

In terms of AI investment, Byte is also at a high level compared to peers. Early this year, reports said that ByteDance plans to invest over $12 billion in AI infrastructure by 2025, doubling its 2024 capital expenditure from 80 billion yuan to 160 billion yuan. These investments are mainly for building its own computing power centers and DPU chip development.

All signs suggest that Byte is clearly not content with just a few AI apps, but is committed to becoming a new giant in the AI era, directly influencing the future landscape of AI competition.

It is worth mentioning that Zhang Yiming's return is not an isolated case. In this wave of AI transformation, several first-generation internet entrepreneurs are returning to the stage.

This year, JD.com founder Richard Liu has been exceptionally active. After inspecting AI projects at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in March, he quickly pushed for new initiatives in food delivery and travel, and announced the 2.2 billion euro acquisition of European consumer electronics retail giant Ceconomy. Alibaba founder Jack Ma has also made frequent appearances at various events, many of which are directly or indirectly related to AI. Alibaba is also heavily betting on AI.

From the return of these three industry leaders, although each company's business and current situation differ, all seem to be associated with AI, and after their return, each has increased its bet on AI. This means that the competitive landscape of China's internet industry may be reshaped as these individuals return and increase their involvement.

In addition to demonstrating determination through investment, the AI wave also tests the efficiency of these internet companies in commercialization at this stage. Zack Kass, the former Head of Global Commercialization at OpenAI, said: "I don't believe the value of AI is in focusing on model development. More important is application. The key to winning is building more cost-effective platforms and applications that everyone can use."

In the future, who can become the winner will depend on which company can provide consumers with better, more efficient, and more cost-effective application experiences. After all, technology is the foundation, and the real challenge is to find suitable application scenarios and achieve commercial implementation.

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