China's largest AI model is being developed at ByteDance

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is training a new flagship AI model with up to 10 trillion parameters, the Financial Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. That's more than three times the size of Chinese startup Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 (2.8 trillion parameters), currently the largest open Chinese model.

Industry estimates cited by the FT put Anthropic's flagship Mythos 5 at around 8 trillion parameters and Fable 5 at about 5 trillion, meaning ByteDance's new model is approaching Mythos 5's scale. Direct comparisons with leading US models are difficult, since companies like Anthropic and OpenAI don't disclose their systems' exact parameter counts. Other Chinese rivals that have already crossed the trillion-parameter threshold include Meituan's LongCat-2.0 and DeepSeek's V4-Pro, both at 1.6 trillion parameters. ByteDance's model is currently in pre-training, a process that typically takes three to six months, before fine-tuning and, if development goes well, a public release. ByteDance hasn't confirmed an official name for the model — the company didn't immediately respond to the FT's request for comment, though its consumer AI products already run under the Doubao brand.

• Up to 10 trillion parameters — more than three times Kimi K3's 2.8 trillion
• For comparison: Anthropic's Mythos 5 is around 8 trillion, Fable 5 about 5 trillion
• The model is in pre-training (3-6 months); no official name confirmed yet

Kimi K3 is exactly what we compared Alibaba's new Qwen3.8 Max against yesterday — on Artificial Analysis scores, Kimi K3 still edges out both Qwen and Claude Opus 4.8, so a ByteDance model at this scale could reshuffle the pecking order among Chinese developers all over again. As for the Anthropic flagships ByteDance is now being measured against by size — back in early July they briefly fell under US export controls before being cleared 19 days later.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.