ByteDance's Doubao cuts general Session team by half as chat products face monetization challenges

ByteDance's AI app Doubao is cutting its general Session team, reducing it from about 50 people to roughly half. The team was once the largest within Doubao, handling strategy and evaluation for the chat product. Some staff will move to Doubao's monetization and Feishu teams, while others will be laid off. Doubao head Zhao Qi pushed for the change and broke up the independent evaluation team after taking over.

Meanwhile, the Product Posttrain-Chat team is also shrinking. It belongs to the Seed large model division and produces small models for Doubao to use. Due to reduced business needs, some employees have moved to other departments.

With over 200 million DAU, Doubao is among China's most-used AI apps. Its success has largely come from chat products, but chat products are now hitting monetization limits. The cuts don't mean Doubao is giving up on chat, as the team is still improving dialogue quality and merged several small models into one around June.