The ByteDance logo can be seen on the company’s headquarters building in Singapore. Rozlan Rahman—AFP via Getty Images
China’s tech royalties are experiencing a bit of upheaval. Startups like his PDD Holdings, owner of Pinduoduo and Temu, and returning giants like Baidu are capitalizing on changing e-commerce trends and the rise of AI to compete with Alibaba, Tencent, Jingdong and others. We are challenging companies. Even ByteDance, which revolutionized social media with short video apps Douyin and TikTok, is feeling the heat.
ByteDance CEO Liang Lebo was the latest to voice concerns about being left out, according to excerpts of his speech posted on ByteDance’s WeChat account. In 2023, Liang complained that employees were “not sensitive enough to external changes,” and employees started talking about ChatGPT, the hot chatbot developed by OpenAI that sparked the AI boom. As I got older, I started to feel dissatisfied.
Liang warned that inefficiencies and lack of speed would turn ByteDance into a “mediocre organization.” He gave an example of a task that was originally predicted to take him 1,000 man-days to complete, but after thorough review, was reduced to just 15 man-days.
Similar to the United States, China’s technology sector is in the midst of a race to adopt generative AI. The most notable effort is by Baidu and his ERNIE chatbot, which Baidu claims is as good as OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. But Alibaba, Tencent, Jingdong, and a number of Chinese startups are all launching their own AI services.
ByteDance launched its own chatbot, Doubao, in August last year. The Verge In mid-December, we reported that ByteDance was using OpenAI’s technology to train its own chatbots, violating OpenAI’s terms of service. OpenAI subsequently suspended ByteDance’s account.
Liang is the second Chinese tech CEO to complain about employees this week.
On Monday, Tencent CEO and co-founder Pony Ma told staff that the company’s video game business “didn’t accomplish anything” last year. According to Reuters, he complained that Tencent’s new games did not perform as well as he had hoped. Tencent’s standard products become hit products such as the following. king’s honor and PUBG Mobile Although it continues to generate strong revenue, its new games are losing out to games from other Chinese developers such as NetEase and miHoYo. Genshin Impact.
Tencent’s CEO now wants to squeeze more growth out of WeChat, the company’s ubiquitous messaging app. “We should find new shoots from old trees,” Ma told employees, referring to the 13-year-old platform and its social media offering.
Still, Ma was hesitant to expand WeChat’s other core services. The platform also functions as one of China’s two largest digital payment processors, along with Ant Group’s Alipay. Mr. Ma reportedly told staff in the company’s digital payment services division to reduce their market share and that the company should be considered a “bank partner.”
Regulators last year fined Tencent about 3 billion yuan (about $422 million) for violating regulations regarding the management of customer data.
Alibaba and JD
Chinese e-commerce giants have also criticized their employees for being laid-back.
JD.com chairman and founder Ricardo Liu told employees to stop “laying flat” in a post on the company’s bulletin board. The name comes from a Chinese slang term for doing the bare minimum to survive. Mr. Liu warned that without change, “there is no way out for the company.”
Liu’s warning followed a similar message from Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce company Alibaba. Mr. Ma attended an internal Alibaba forum in November, calling for “change and reform” at the company and praising new entrant PDD Holdings.
PDD Holdings is the owner of e-commerce platform Pinduoduo and US-based shopping platform Temu. In China, Pinduoduo tends to offer lower prices and has also introduced group purchasing, where consumers in community groups can buy groceries and other items in bulk at lower prices.
Alibaba and JDCom have generated more revenue than PDD, but investors appear to be more bullish on PDD’s prospects. PDD reported a 94% year-over-year increase in revenue for the quarter ending September 30th, in contrast to Alibaba’s more than 30% decline and Jingdong’s more than 60% decline. It has increased more than 20% in one year. Com.
