36Kr Exclusive | Doubao's DAU Exceeds 100 Million, Becoming ByteDance's Product with the Lowest Promotion Cost to Reach 100 Million Users

Author | Li Xiaoxia

Editors | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

36Kr has exclusively learned that the daily active users (DAU) of Doubao have exceeded 100 million, adding another product with a DAU of over 100 million to ByteDance's APP empire. 

After multiple verifications by 36Kr, this data is confirmed to be true.

According to insiders at ByteDance, the UG and marketing expenses of Doubao are the lowest among all of ByteDance's products with a DAU of over 100 million in its history. 

People familiar with the matter said that the user retention rate of Doubao this year is acceptable. In addition, Doubao's Seedream image - generation model and Seedance video - generation model continue to activate the creative scenarios. The P - charting features like the three - grid layout of Doubao have consecutively made it onto the hot search lists, driving up to millions of organic downloads per day.

ByteDance was one of the early companies to enter the AI field in China. As early as June 2023, ByteDance started the internal testing of Doubao and launched the Doubao APP in August. In contrast, Kimi was launched on October 9, 2023, and Tencent Yuanbao was launched on May 30, 2024, giving Doubao a head - start. Since then, Doubao has long topped the APP download list.

Beyond this achievement, Doubao has also taken a series of intensive actions: from launching Doubao mobile phones to complete the "hardware + AI" layout, to connecting with Douyin e - commerce to open up the "AI + consumption" scenario, Doubao is also trying to quickly build an ecosystem covering multiple scenarios.

The success of the product cannot be separated from the support of technology and organization. The ByteDance Seed team, to which the Doubao large - model belongs, is regarded as the company's core strategic business. In 2025, not only were multiple teams such as the AI Lab merged and integrated, but the organizational structure was also upgraded. Wu Yonghui became the leader of the team, fully focusing on the basic research and application implementation of large - models. To motivate the team, ByteDance also provided additional stock options for Seed team members and canceled the quarterly OKR assessment for some long - term research projects.

Meanwhile, the rapid rise of Doubao is stirring up the competition landscape in the domestic AI application market. Facing its strong traffic and excellent key indicators, other tech giants are also stepping up their investments.

In the first half of the year, Tencent Yuanbao continued to ramp up its promotion. According to AppGrowing data, since February this year, Yuanbao's advertising expenditure has been on the rise, and the cumulative investment by July was nearly 6 billion yuan. Yuanbao also once topped the free APP download list on the Chinese App Store.

At the end of this year, as Alibaba launched its AI - to - consumer plan, Qianwen, Afu, and Lingguang have successively carried out large - scale promotions. Qianwen announced that its monthly active users had exceeded 30 million just 23 days after its launch.

It is understood that Volcengine will become the exclusive AI cloud partner of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala of China Media Group, and Doubao will also cooperate by launching some interactive features.

As the most - watched cultural IP in China, the interactive cooperation with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala has always been a battleground for companies and brands. Douyin was the exclusive interactive platform for the Spring Festival Gala in 2019 and 2021.

The year 2025 is regarded as the first year of AI, which began with the emergence and phenomenal popularity of DeepSeek. As we enter 2026, it may be Doubao that takes on the task of popularizing AI and integrating it into the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people.

However, there are also voices within ByteDance suggesting that there is no clear path for Doubao's commercialization, and the inference cost for its large DAU also puts some pressure on the company's profits.

However, it is reported that the commercialization progress of the MaaS service of the Doubao large - model has far exceeded expectations. Through technological optimization, it has achieved high cost - effectiveness and good gross profit.