ME News reports that on May 26 (UTC+8), to prevent competitors such as Tencent from poaching talent, ByteDance recently granted employees in its AI lab, Seed, special stock options named after Doubao at a discounted price, enabling them to directly benefit from the growth of its AI business without being affected by equity dilution across other business units within the company. This option plan marks ByteDance’s first issuance of special stock options tied to a single business unit. As competition for talent in China’s large model sector intensifies, core engineering roles in infrastructure and data annotation have become prime targets. Since establishing the Seed lab in 2023, ByteDance has become NVIDIA’s largest customer in China through massive investments in computing infrastructure, attracting numerous top-tier AI researchers. However, since Tencent acknowledged its lag in large model development by the end of 2025, it has launched an aggressive, targeted recruitment drive led by former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu. Recently departed senior members from Seed’s vision platform, Xiao Xuefeng, and infrastructure expert Zhang Chi, have both joined Tencent. To counter these poaching efforts, ByteDance this month offered global Seed employees the option to purchase Doubao special shares at $13 per share—a nearly 30% increase from $10 per share at the end of 2025—reflecting improvements in Doubao’s commercialization and model performance. While the option scheme promises substantial potential returns, internal disputes have emerged. Some insiders reveal that the Seed lab has grown to 2,000 employees and now faces challenges of bureaucratic inefficiency and fragmented responsibilities. In contrast, Tencent’s AI team is smaller and offers researchers greater autonomy, managerial responsibilities, and more attractive compensation packages. Beyond Tencent, DeepSeek is also under intense pressure from talent competition and is currently raising its first round of funding to retain its core team. Meanwhile, ByteDance itself successfully recruited several of DeepSeek’s core infrastructure personnel in 2025. (Source: BlockBeats)
ByteDance issues seed options to prevent Tencent from poaching talent
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Summary
ByteDance has launched low-cost stock options named 'DouBao' for employees of its AI lab Seed, priced at $13 per share, in an effort to combat talent poaching—particularly from Tencent. The options market views such incentives as an emerging trend in the tech sector. Seed, now with 2,000 employees, faces internal challenges such as bureaucracy. Altcoins to watch may reflect broader market responses to these corporate strategies.
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