{"id":385537,"date":"2026-04-18T08:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/385537\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T08:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:29:12","slug":"bytedance-tencent-step-up-ai-talent-battle-amid-reported-departure-of-deepseek-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/385537\/","title":{"rendered":"ByteDance, Tencent step up AI talent battle amid reported departure of DeepSeek researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">As China\u2019s artificial intelligence sector accelerates, competition for top talent has intensified among major tech companies, with firms increasingly poaching from rivals while also attracting researchers from overseas hubs such as Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">A reported high-profile personnel move involving DeepSeek researcher Guo Daya recently drew attention to the sensitivity surrounding AI hiring in China\u2019s tech sector.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Guo, a lead researcher on DeepSeek\u2019s R1 model, joined ByteDance\u2019s Seed AI development team with annual pay said to be as high as 100 million yuan (US$14.7 million), according to Chinese media outlet LatePost on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">However, Li Liang, a vice-president of ByteDance\u2019s Douyin Group, denied the reported compensation amount in a social media post on Thursday, saying that \u201cByteDance\u2019s Seed team is placed under the same compensation framework which includes cash remuneration as well as ByteDance equity and Doubao-related stock options\u201d.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">He added that it was likely some staff could earn hundreds of millions of yuan by exercising their stock options after four years, but did not confirm whether Guo had joined the company.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The South China Morning Post could not verify the LatePost report. Guo\u2019s name has yet to appear in ByteDance\u2019s internal staff system, a ByteDance employee said, although new staff members may use pseudonyms.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The ByteDance logo is seen at the company\u2019s office in Shanghai, July 4, 2023. Photo: Reuters\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8b89bc24-e235-46fd-8086-1d0c551f6c69_5225f804.jpg\" title=\"The ByteDance logo is seen at the company\u2019s office in Shanghai, July 4, 2023. Photo: Reuters\"\/>The ByteDance logo is seen at the company\u2019s office in Shanghai, July 4, 2023. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As China\u2019s artificial intelligence sector accelerates, competition for top talent has intensified among major tech companies, with firms&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,351,363,364,610,607,7708,127526,367,200000,8870,199998,33438,130067,111,139,69,620,199999,7718,145,20009],"class_list":{"0":"post-385537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-bytedance","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-deepseek","15":"tag-doubao","16":"tag-google","17":"tag-guo-daya","18":"tag-hangzhou","19":"tag-latepost","20":"tag-meta-platforms","21":"tag-microsoft-research-asia","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-openai","26":"tag-seed-ai","27":"tag-silicon-valley","28":"tag-technology","29":"tag-tencent-holdings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}