In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving, an intriguing question arises: What can one yuan accomplish? As of December 2023, the release of ByteDance's latest Doubao Vision Understanding Model has provided a fresh answer to this question — it can process 284 720P imagesThis advancement not only marks a significant achievement in AI capabilities but also disrupts the industry with an astonishing reduction in cost, bringing the price of input tokens down to a mere 0.03 yuan, an impressive 85% lower than the common market rate.

Technological innovations often create a ripple effect in the market, and the update of Doubao has triggered a notable breakthrough in visual modeling, sparking a series of advancements across various tech domainsFor instance, the Universal Model Pro claims it has fully aligned itself with GPT-4 while pricing itself at only one-eighth of GPT-4's costs

Furthermore, the music model has progressed from generating 60-second snippets to creating complete three-minute works, showcasing a remarkable expansion in AI's creative capabilitiesMoreover, Doubao's version 2.1 of the text-to-image model has taken the lead in the industry by introducing a product that can generate images from Chinese characters and create graphic outputs based on a sentence, likely revolutionizing digital art and content creation.

By mid-December, data revealed that the daily token usage of the Doubao Universal Model had skyrocketed past 4 trillion, representing a staggering 33-fold increase since its launchThis performance caught the attention of the capital markets, resulting in a boost for several stocks associated with "Doubao," as investors speculated on the potential impact of these advancements.

However, the business world is not without its voices of rationality

On December 19, ByteDance released a public statement addressing the recent speculation surrounding "Doubao concept stocks." The company notably criticized the exaggerations and fabrications regarding capital expenditures, data centers, and AI hardware, urging investors to remain vigilant and be cautious of investment risks.

Amidst this wave of technological innovation and market reactions, an essential inquiry remains: What does Doubao truly represent, and how has it managed to create such significant ripples in the Chinese AI market?

The competition within the AI sector is evidently heating up, with ByteDance aggressively pursuing growthCurrently, the company operates around 20 AI applications, reflecting a strategy of "multiple points of bloom" within its product ecosystemNotably, many of these applications are projected to launch in 2024, indicating ByteDance's accelerated efforts to establish a foothold in AI.

As competition intensifies in the large model application market, a struggle surrounding user acquisition and pricing is beginning to take shape

Doubao's pricing strategy serves as a microcosm of this industry rivalry, showcasing the ongoing "internal competition" that drives companies to innovate and reduce costs.

In the context of the current market landscape, both startups and internet giants must reassess their competitive strategiesThe pricing structure in the B2B market is undergoing a new adjustment, while the consumer-facing market is evolving into an all-out war for user attention.

In this intensified battle for user acquisition, data from AppGrowing indicates that by November 15, marketing expenditures for ten AI-native applications reached 1.5 billion yuan, with over 350 million yuan spent in October aloneNotable players in this marketing war include Kimi and Doubao, who invested 540 million yuan and 400 million yuan, respectively, solidifying their positions as the two most heavily advertised products.

A closer examination of Doubao's marketing strategy reveals a clearly progressive investment trend

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During April and May 2024, advertisements fell between 15 to 17.5 million yuan, but by early June, a single marketing campaign reached an investment of 124 million yuanBesides regular market spending, Doubao has prominently positioned itself within Douyin, a significant traffic platform for AI application advertisements.

This substantial market investment has yielded remarkable user growthAccording to statistics from QuantumBit Think Tank, as of the end of November, Doubao amassed over 160 million users with nearly 9 million daily active users, ranking just below ChatGPT in the global AI assistant landscape.

In terms of app store performance, Doubao has consistently dominated the free app charts on the App Store since its launch in May, even holding the number one position for an entire month in JuneThis accelerated growth trajectory has also altered the advertising landscape of content platforms like Bilibili, where Kimi's ads have been replaced by Doubao's prevalent marketing materials.

However, after this rapid expansion, Doubao faces new challenges: How to maintain its growth momentum and achieve sustainable development?

ByteDance’s ambitions in AI speak volumes about their strategic vision

"The greatest sense of crisis is the fear that ByteDance as an organization may become mediocre and fail to break new ground," stated CEO Liang Rubo during the annual staff meeting on January 30, 2023. This reflection underscores the depth of concern within a major internet firm navigating the AI wave.

Such concerns are not unfoundedBetween 2018 and 2021, China's internet sectors experienced a mass exodus of AI talent, with industry leaders like Andrew Ng and other AI Lab heads opting to return to academia or venture into startupsIn parallel, global AI developments underwent significant transformations, represented by OpenAI’s progression to GPT-3 and Google’s introduction of the BERT model and Transformer architecture, foundational elements for the future of scaling AI technologies.

Despite efforts from various domestic tech giants—ByteDance developing multi-billion parameter models, Baidu unveiling ERNIE, Alibaba launching M6, and Huawei releasing the Pangu model—the reality was that R&D priorities still focused on specific tasks, with skepticism about the commercialization prospects of larger language models.

The landscape shifted dramatically on November 30, 2022, with the monumental arrival of ChatGPT, which disrupted the established rhythms of the industry

Following ChatGPT's success, ByteDance began to strategically position itself in the arena of large language models: forming the "Seed" team in February to spearhead AI initiatives, launching the "Fire Mountain Ark" platform in June to support model training for emerging companies such as YuYue, and introducing Doubao as an AI assistant in August while also securing its place in the national registry of large models.

As this race evolves, the competition for talent intensifiesByteDance successfully attracted heavyweights from the industry, including individuals previously leading projects at Alibaba and Google, while implementing major internal overhauls to bolster its AI capabilities.

Today, the Flow team has emerged as a strategic pillar alongside Douyin, Fire Mountain, and Feishu, creating a comprehensive AI ecosystem through collaborative efforts among AI product teams, large model research teams, and product support teams.

It is evident that the global AI landscape is undergoing rapid reconstruction