ByteDance's Volcano Engine Lauches Doubao Amid Competition in China's Enterprise LLMs Sector

AsianFin--Volcano Engine, the cloud computing services arm of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has introduced nine models under its large language model Doubao. The main enterprise model is priced at over 99% cheaper than the industry average.

At a recent launch event, Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine, revealed that Doubao's enterprise model costs 0.0008 Chinese cents (0.00011 US cents) per 1,000 tokens, representing a significant reduction of 99.3 percent compared to the industry average. Tan pointed out that similar models from other enterprises with the same specifications are typically priced at an average of 12 Chinese cents (2 US cents) per 1,000 tokens.

Since its debut as Skylark last August and being among the first large language models to pass China's algorithm registry, Doubao has been processing an average of 120 billion text tokens and generating 30 million pictures daily, according to Tan. He emphasized that extensive usage is crucial for training a quality large language model, which also substantially reduces its unit costs.

Tan highlighted a significant development in the sector this year, indicating a substantial increase in the capabilities of large language models. He underscored the importance of developing applications, which necessitates a thriving ecosystem.

Lowering costs is pivotal for propelling large language models into a phase of value creation, Tan emphasized. He noted that while large language model applications are still in their early stages, reducing costs will facilitate their broader adoption.

Leveraging its large language model, ByteDance has created various artificial intelligence tools, including the chat assistant Doubao, the app development platform Coze, the interactive entertainment app Parallel Odyssey, and AI creation tools like Butterfly Unicorn and Dreamnia. These tools have been integrated into over 50 businesses, including Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), Fanqie Novel, Feishu, and Oceanengine, to enhance efficiency and improve product experience.

Collaborating with numerous enterprise clients of Volcano Engine, Doubao has developed nine models, including professional and lite editions of generic, speech recognition, speech synthesis, and text-to-picture models.