TikTok owner ByteDance has introduced a new incentive system to keep its AI employees. According to the Financial Times, the company has started offering stock options to employees of its Seed AI lab under special conditions.
These options are not tied to the entire ByteDance company, but to its AI chatbot project Doubao. Employees are given the opportunity to buy shares at $ 13. According to the report, at the end of 2025, the intrinsic value of these shares was about $ 10, but by May 2026 this figure had increased by almost 30%.
The company is taking this step due to the intensifying competition for personnel in the AI field. Retaining engineers involved in infrastructure and data processing is considered critical for ByteDance.
In China, ByteDance is considered one of the main companies where high-level AI specialists are concentrated. Large technology companies such as Tencent are trying to transfer these employees by offering higher salaries and more management freedom.
The Doubao platform features AI models that write text, image and video generators, podcasts, presentations, and audio tools. Wired described the platform as “a fusion of ChatGPT, Midjourney, Sora, TikTok, and other popular AI services.”
As of February 2026, Doubao had over 100 million daily active users.
