At the 2026 ByteDance Volcano Engine Force Power Conference, ByteDance sent a clear signal: the company's strategic focus has undergone a substantial shift. CEO Liang Rubo set "Bravely Ascend to New Heights" as the key term for this year, with the core path being to focus on enhancing the fundamental capabilities of large models, and explicitly designated Volcano Engine's PaaS business as the company's foundational business, committing long-term efforts to the MaaS (Model as a Service) field.

Data shows that ByteDance's model call volume has grown rapidly. As of June 2026, the daily average tokens call volume of Douyin Large Model reached 180 trillion, growing more than 1500 times since its launch, and increasing by more than 10 times in the past year. However, behind the massive traffic data, the transformation of the business model is imminent. Previously, it was reported that although the Douyin app has over 200 million daily active users, its main revenue still relies on traditional e-commerce commissions, and the computing power costs are high, with daily consumption reaching tens of millions of yuan.

To solve this dilemma of "large traffic but difficult monetization," ByteDance has recently reorganized and reallocated strategic resources. It is reported that after internal executives visited the overseas AI giant Anthropic, the company began to significantly adjust the resource allocation ratio, shifting the business focus from consumer-grade products aimed at the general public to more commercially promising enterprise-level services.

In this transition process, the video generation model Seedance has become an important "benchmark project." Data shows that Seedance's annualized revenue has already reached $2 billion (approximately RMB 13.574 billion), with monthly revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan, and the majority of its revenue comes from enterprise customers. This performance not only proves the feasibility of the "enterprise service" direction, but also to some extent offsets the significant computing power investment of Douyin.

Additionally, to further strengthen the technology moat, the new version of Seedance will introduce a "3D white model preview" feature, which is a first in the industry. From pursuing user scale to deepening enterprise value, ByteDance is trying to explore a new path with self-sustaining capabilities in the increasingly fierce competition of AI large models through technological cost reduction and scenario-based implementation.