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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published the proposal "The Extremely Lean Chain," demonstrating how to radically compress the state requirements of the Ethereum consensus chain in the context of the "Lean" upgrade. This plan shifts responsibility to validators, who manage and periodically prove their state through ZK proofs, thereby eliminating the processing burden for each epoch and potentially supporting millions of validators.The core mechanisms include: removing the validator public keys from the on-chain state, storing only the deposit tree index; canceling real-time reward and penalty processing, with validators generating daily STARK proofs of their participation and updating balances; completely re-randomizing validator identities daily, achieving strong anonymity through ZK-STARK, with withdrawal addresses exposed only at the time of withdrawal and not publicly linked to deposits or on-chain activities. Vitalik stated that based on upgrades such as single-slot finality and quantum-resistant signature aggregation, the state requirement per validator could be compressed from approximately 180 bytes to 6 bytes. The daily proof cost for a single validator requires processing about 5400 Merkle branches, which can be completed within 1 hour on ordinary hardware, and the on-chain burden can be reduced through aggregated proofs. Additionally, this design can achieve a "virtually free" single secret leader election function, with 1 day as the conservative cycle length and 1 hour as the lower limit.

According to Yicai, there were previous reports that Kunlun Core, a subsidiary of Baidu, plans to go public in Hong Kong, and Tencent has become its client, while ByteDance is also considering using its AI chips. In response to this, sources close to the matter told Yicai today that ByteDance currently has no intention of cooperating with Kunlun Core.

According to Jinshi, Qualcomm's stock in the U.S. night market once rose over 4%, and the current increase has narrowed to 3%. The news states that Qualcomm is in talks with ByteDance to provide customized chip design services.

According to reports from Blue Whale Technology, the next-generation Doubao AI phone, jointly promoted by ZTE and ByteDance, may be delayed from its originally expected release in the second quarter due to issues with the filing and certification process. Sources reveal that the phone needs to pass both the large model filing with the Cyberspace Administration and the network access certification with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; currently, the product is still in the second application filing stage. If the approval goes smoothly, the new device is expected to be launched as early as July to August this year.In terms of the supply chain, the screen supplier for the next-generation Doubao phone has been changed from Shentianma to BOE, the battery will use Desay battery and ATL cells, and the manufacturing will be handled by Zhongnuo Communications, a subsidiary of Furui Electronics. Additionally, reports indicate that this product mainly adopts a technical route that deeply integrates large models into the underlying operating system, but it currently faces ecological barriers due to the lack of data access permissions from leading platforms like Tencent and Alibaba when implementing system-level agent cross-application calls.

According to the "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily," at the 2026 Volcano Engine Force Conference, ByteDance officially released the latest flagship version 2.1Pro of the Doubao large model. Tan Dai, President of Volcano Engine, stated that the model has made breakthroughs in four dimensions: code delivery, long-range Agent tasks, multimodal understanding, and enterprise-level stable operation, possessing stronger engineering delivery capabilities and being capable of handling complex R&D tasks for enterprises. At the conference, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo also emphasized that the company will focus on enhancing large model capabilities and firmly invest in MaaS (Model as a Service) business.The report pointed out that ByteDance's AI strategic focus is clearly shifting towards enterprise-level services. Currently, the daily token call volume of the Doubao large model has reached 180 trillion, an increase of over 1500 times since its release, and has grown more than 10 times in the past year. However, due to the bottleneck in monetization on the consumer side and high expenses (with daily computing costs reaching tens of millions and daily revenue below one million), ByteDance has accordingly adjusted its resource allocation. Meanwhile, the video generation model Seedance, primarily aimed at the B-end, has validated its commercialization potential, with current annual recurring revenue (ARR) reaching 2 billion dollars, effectively offsetting Doubao's computing costs. In addition, the new version of Seedance will also be the first in the industry to launch a 3D white membrane preview feature.

According to foreign media reports, the board of ByteDance reached a consensus in early May 2026 to postpone its initial public offering (IPO) plan. Founder Zhang Yiming believes there is still room for valuation growth, and going public at this stage would transfer too many benefits to late-stage risk-free investors.Currently, the trading valuation of ByteDance in the over-the-counter gray market has exceeded $600 billion. A senior technology investment banker at Bank of America stated that the company's market value is expected to approach $1 trillion, setting a new industry benchmark.Policy and geopolitical risks have eased somewhat. In early 2026, Oracle Corporation reached an agreement with an investor consortium to jointly acquire 80% of TikTok's U.S. entity, effectively clearing most related regulatory pressures.In terms of AI business, the Doubao APP, as the largest chat assistant by user scale in the country, is adding paid tiers on top of its free service.

According to Bloomberg, citing informed sources, Microsoft has established a substantial business by selling OpenAI models to Chinese companies, despite facing intensified competition between China and the United States in the field of artificial intelligence. Among them, ByteDance has been one of Microsoft's largest artificial intelligence clients in recent years, primarily using OpenAI models. Informed sources say that ByteDance's annual spending on Microsoft's artificial intelligence and cloud services is expected to exceed $1 billion.

According to reports from major companies, ByteDance's Seed department has internally issued a notice announcing the latest adjustment to the price of "Doubao Stock," with the new price set at $14.85. Compared to the initial announcement of $13.08 in April this year, the price of this virtual equity has increased by 13.5% within two months.It is reported that "Doubao Stock" is an exclusive virtual equity of ByteDance Seed and related upstream and downstream businesses, typically opening buyback windows about twice a year. In comparison, the regular option prices of ByteDance adjusted from $229.5 to $235.5 between April and June this year (an increase of about 2.63%). The valuation growth rate of "Doubao Stock" during the same period has significantly surpassed the overall options of the company.With the continuous growth of the Doubao large model in user scale and commercial revenue, this option may break the previous fixed frequency of "adjusting every six months" and welcome more flexible and frequent pricing adjustments in the future.

According to LatePost, ByteDance is adjusting its AI resource allocation strategy, shifting its focus from consumer-facing products like "Doubao" to products that serve enterprise clients. This change is partly influenced by the high operational costs of AI and challenges to existing business models.It is reported that "Doubao" has over 200 million daily active users, but due to the enormous computational costs associated with inference and multimodal capabilities, it incurs daily expenses of tens of millions, while its monetization channels, such as e-commerce, generate less than one million daily. In contrast, ByteDance's video generation model Seedance demonstrates strong profitability. Thanks to its efficient MoE architecture (200 billion parameters) and relatively low reliance on inference computing power, Seedance 2.0 currently has a gross margin of 70%, with the vast majority of its revenue coming from enterprise clients, and its current annual recurring revenue (ARR) has reached 2 billion dollars.Insiders reveal that ByteDance's large model data review team has expanded to over 3,000 people this year, primarily to clean training data for programming models. Meanwhile, the MaaS business of Volcano Engine has also been placed in a more important position, with ByteDance's top management setting a goal to increase revenue tenfold and accelerate international expansion. Additionally, ByteDance executives recently visited Anthropic, which has achieved significant growth in both revenue and valuation through enterprise-level AI programming services, providing a reference for ByteDance's strategic adjustments.

According to Jinshi Data, as the cost of memory chips rises and ByteDance accelerates its layout in artificial intelligence (AI), the company has increased its AI infrastructure spending plan for this year by 25% to 200 billion yuan.

ByteDance announced that it has reached a final agreement to sell Moonton Technology to Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), for a sale price of over $6 billion. Moonton Technology is the developer and publisher of the famous MOBA mobile game in Southeast Asia, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), which was acquired by ByteDance in 2021.It is reported that ByteDance has made significant investments in AI, and the overall profit declined in the fourth quarter of 2025. The sale of Moonton is seen as a signal of ByteDance's strategic focus further shifting towards AI.

According to IT Home citing The Information, two informed sources stated that TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance has suspended its global launch plan for the latest video generation model Seedance 2.0 after a series of copyright disputes with several major Hollywood studios and streaming platforms.The report stated that ByteDance originally planned to launch this new video model to global users in mid-March, but has now suspended the related plans. The report added that ByteDance's legal team is investigating and addressing potential legal issues, and engineers are also increasing protective mechanisms to prevent the model from generating content that may lead to further intellectual property infringements.

TikTok announced that it has established the TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. This joint venture will be responsible for data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance for TikTok in the United States.The TikTok USDS joint venture is composed of three managing investors: Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX, each holding a 15% stake. Other investors include the Dell family office, Vastmere Strategic Investments, LLC, Alpha Wave Partners, and Revolution, among others. ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake in the joint venture.

Web3 asset data platform RootData published a daily transparency alert on Twitter (X), raising concerns about the financing information of projects such as ByteNova, Endless, Tune.FM, Ark of Panda, and Chainge. It calls on project teams to submit/update information on RootData to improve their transparency scores. Additionally, RootData stated that it will continue to monitor and expose "black box" projects that lack core information.It is reported that the RootData transparency score is used to measure the integrity and timeliness of projects, aiming to reflect the information disclosure status of the projects. The transparency score is divided into five levels from A to F, with lower scores indicating less complete information disclosure and higher risks of wrongdoing, requiring investors to be highly vigilant.

Focusing on embodied intelligence, Chinese high-tech startup X Square Robot (X²) announced that it has completed a 1 billion yuan A++ round of financing. This round was jointly invested by top investment institutions and various local platforms, including ByteDance, Sequoia China, Beijing Information Industry Development Fund, Shenzhen Capital Group, Nanshan Zhanxin Investment, and Xichuang Investment.It is reported that this is also the first investment since the establishment of the Shenzhen Capital Group AI Fund. Notably, in addition to ByteDance, X Square has also received investments from Meituan and Alibaba in previous financing rounds, making it the only embodied intelligence company in China to be simultaneously invested in by these three major internet giants.

According to official news, MEXC will launch ByteNova (BYTE) in the Innovation Zone on January 8, 2026, at 18:00 (UTC+8) and open the BYTE/USDT trading pair.To celebrate this launch, MEXC is simultaneously launching the ByteNova (BYTE) Airdrop+ event, sharing 416,666 BYTE & 25,000 USDT.Event time: January 7, 2026, 18:00 (UTC+8) -- January 14, 2026, 18:00 (UTC+8)

According to the Financial Times, ByteDance plans to invest $23 billion heavily in artificial intelligence.