On October 16, at the FORCE LINK AI innovation tour held in Wuhan, Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine, disclosed that the daily token call volume of the Doubao model increased from 120 billion in May last year to 30 trillion yuan in September this year, a 253-fold increase.

According to the IDC report, in the first half of this year, Volcano Engine ranked first in the number of service calls to China's public cloud large model, with a market share of 49.2%. According to QuestMobile data, as of August, Doubao's monthly active users reached 157 million, surpassing DeepSeek's 143 million.

This counterattack highlights the difference between technological leadership and product capabilities. Relying on ByteDance's "application factory" experience and deep integration with Douyin, Doubao is proving that in the consumer AI market, user experience and distribution capabilities are no less important than model performance itself.

The new model of bean bags reduces the cost of AI

The upgrade of the bean bag model directly hits the biggest pain point of enterprises using AI - the cost of inference is too high to use. Version 1.6 of the Doubao model released in Wuhan natively supports four "thinking modes" for the first time: Minimal, Low, Medium, and High.

Enterprises can flexibly choose whether to "use their mouths" or "brains" according to different scenarios, and use them as needed to avoid waste.

Why do you need this feature?

One of the major trends in AI this year is that models are increasingly "thinking deeply" and are more effective, but they are also costly. Take Doubao-Seed-1.6, which was launched in June, as an example:

After turning on deep thinking, the effect increased by 31%, which sounds great, but here comes the problem -
in real-time scenarios, more than 77% of computing resources are spent on "thinking", causing costs to soar. As a result, 82% of companies simply choose to turn off this feature, preferring to sacrifice the effect and save money.

Now, the new version Doubao-Seed-1.6-1015 improves this issue:
in "low intensity mode", the effect remains the same, but the output text volume is reduced by 77.5%, and the thinking time is reduced by 84.6%, truly achieving "good and cheap". At the same time, a lightweight version of the model, Doubao-Seed-1.6-lite, is smaller and runs faster. The effect is stronger than the previous generation Pro version; When dealing with short content, the total cost is reduced by 53% compared to the previous generation, making it particularly suitable for cost-sensitive SMBs.

Intelligent model selection for more cost-saving

Volcano Engine also launched the "Intelligent Model Routing" function, which will automatically select the most suitable model according to your needs, supporting three modes:

It can not only call Doubao's own models, but also connect to mainstream open source models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi, and flexibly combine them to help enterprises achieve the best results at the lowest cost.

To put it simply, this upgrade has made enterprises more "smart" with AI - think deeply when you should think deeply, save time when you should save time, and no longer pay for unnecessary calculations.

Doubao wins in "easy to use" and "easy to spread"

Doubao can become a market leader, not entirely because of the strongest technology, but because the product design is smarter and easier to use. Some technology analysts pointed out:

DeepSeek is more like a "first-generation AI application", just like the early ChatGPT, with a relatively single function; Doubao represents "China's second-generation AI platform" - it has more complete functions, a clearer interface, and scenario-based guidance, which ordinary people can easily get started, greatly lowering the threshold for use.

Doubao is not just a chatbot, it integrates functions such as chatting, drawing, generating videos, and creating exclusive AI assistants (agents). The most important thing is that it is deeply connected to Douyin!

This means that when Douyin users watch videos, as long as they are in the comment area @Doubao, they can generate video summaries with one click; Doubao users can also watch Douyin videos directly in the app without switching back and forth.

An AI analyst commented: "This kind of convenient + cool experience is particularly easy to impress young people." It is this 'low threshold + high dissemination' feature that makes it particularly easy to become popular on social platforms. ”

The data also proves this: QuestMobile data shows that as of August, nearly 4 out of 10 users who left DeepSeek switched to bean bags.

From fighting technology to landing

In order to help enterprises use AI more smoothly, Volcano Engine is creating a complete toolchain "from development to implementation".

Make it easy for businesses to build their own AI assistants

In terms of "Agent" development, Volcano Engine launched the HiAgent platform and built a "1+N+X" system:

Next, Volcano Engine will also launch the "Buckle Space Enterprise Edition", which provides:

Meet the needs of large enterprises for security, customization, and management.

From fighting technology, to fighting for landing

The rapid rise of bean bags reflects that China's AI competition is changing: technology alone is not enough, the key is who can really use it.

In January this year, DeepSeek became popular around the world because of its efficient model, but its products are still in the "pure text chat" stage, with no functions such as drawing and making videos, and will not actively guide users to operate.

Some users reported that they wanted to generate images or let AI do things automatically, but DeepSeek couldn't do it; During peak periods, the server often lags and cannot be entered. ByteDance is known as the "App Factory" in China - it is good at quickly launching various new apps and constantly optimizing and iterating.

It also has great capabilities: quickly test new features; Divert traffic between Douyin, Toutiao and other own products.

This long-term accumulation of product experience and user operation capabilities is the key to Doubao's ability to surpass opponents with strong technology but weak experience.