ByteDance Launches Doubao 2.0 AI Model, Ushering in 'Agent Era' of Artificial Intelligence

ByteDance Unveils Doubao 2.0 for the 'Agent Era'

ByteDance, the Chinese technology giant and parent company of TikTok, officially launched its latest artificial intelligence model, Doubao 2.0, on Saturday, February 14, 2026. This release marks a significant upgrade to what is already the most widely used AI application in China, with the company positioning the new model to usher in the 'agent era' of artificial intelligence.

The 'agent era' refers to a new generation of AI models designed to independently execute complex real-world tasks, moving beyond simple question-answering functionalities. ByteDance stated that the Pro version of Doubao 2.0 features complex reasoning capabilities and multi-step task execution, which it claims are equivalent to those found in OpenAI's GPT 5.2 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro.

Advanced Capabilities and Cost Efficiency

The Doubao 2.0 series includes several models: Pro, Lite, Mini, and a specialized Code model, catering to diverse applications. The Pro model is specifically tailored for deep inference and long-chain task execution. A key advantage highlighted by ByteDance is the model's cost efficiency, claiming it can reduce usage costs by approximately one order of magnitude (about 10 times) compared to its competitors. ByteDance emphasized that 'This cost advantage will become even more crucial as complex real-world tasks involve large-scale inference and multi-step generation that will consume a large number of tokens.'

Beyond its chatbot functionality, Doubao is integrated as a built-in model tool across ByteDance's extensive suite of services, including Douyin. It performs critical functions such as video summarization, content moderation, search ranking, comment analysis, and ad targeting. As of December 2025, the Doubao model family's daily token usage had surpassed 50 trillion, securing its position as the top in China and third globally.

Intensifying AI Competition in China

The launch of Doubao 2.0 comes amidst fierce competition in China's rapidly evolving AI landscape. ByteDance's move is strategically timed ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, a period when many Chinese tech companies traditionally unveil new AI models to capture attention. The company aims to solidify its market leadership and prevent a repeat of last year, when DeepSeek gained significant global attention with a low-cost AI model comparable to OpenAI's offerings.

Currently, Doubao leads the AI chatbot app market in China with 155 million weekly active users, according to QuestMobile data from the end of December, followed by DeepSeek with 81.6 million users. Domestic rivals, such as Alibaba, are also aggressively competing, with Alibaba recently launching a 3 billion yuan (approximately $400 million USD) coupon-sharing campaign for its Qwen AI app. ByteDance also recently released Seedance 2.0, a multimodal AI video generator, on February 12, 2026.

Global Ambitions

ByteDance's strategic push with Doubao 2.0 underscores its broader global ambitions in generative AI. The company aims to become at least the third-largest player globally in this sector. Its overseas version, Dola, had already surpassed 10 million daily active users globally by the end of 2025, indicating ByteDance's expanding international footprint.