ByteDance Deploys Special Options to Battle Tencent for AI Talent

ByteDance is taking an unusual step to hold onto its AI talent: issuing stock options tied specifically to one business unit. According to the Financial Times, the company has granted employees in its Seed AI lab special low-priced options named after its Doubao model, allowing them to directly benefit from the lab's growth without dilution from other ByteDance businesses. It's the first time ByteDance has issued options linked to a single unit.

As the talent war in China's large language model space heats up, core engineering roles — particularly in infrastructure and data labeling — are the biggest prizes. ByteDance has been a major spender on Nvidia hardware since founding Seed in 2023, making it one of Nvidia's largest customers in China and a magnet for top AI researchers. But Tencent, which admitted to lagging in LLM development as of late 2025, has been aggressively poaching under former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu. Two recent departures from Seed — veteran computer vision researcher Xiao Xuefeng and infrastructure expert Zhang Chi — have already joined Tencent.

In response, ByteDance this month offered all Seed employees worldwide the chance to buy Doubao special shares at $13 each — a 30% increase from $10 at the end of 2025, reflecting the Doubao model's improving commercialization and performance. The options could be a lucrative retention tool, but internal tensions remain. Company insiders say Seed has ballooned to 2,000 people, and the organization is grappling with bureaucracy and fragmented responsibilities. By contrast, Tencent's AI team is smaller and promises researchers more autonomy, management roles, and competitive pay. ByteDance also faces poaching pressure from DeepSeek, which is raising its first funding round to hold onto its team — though ByteDance itself poached several DeepSeek infrastructure members in 2025.