The Doubao-Seed-Code model, released on Tuesday, carries a standard monthly fee of 40 yuan, according to a company statement. The company unveiled its discounted one-month promotion on November 11, China’s annual Singles’ Day shopping festival.

The growth, he added, highlighted the rapid rise in AI adoption among Chinese consumers and reinforced ByteDance’s position among the world’s leading AI players.

The new model set a state-of-the-art record on the SWE-Bench Verified test, placing it on par with mainstream systems such as Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet.

The launch comes after Anthropic, a US AI start-up, updated its service restrictions in September to block access by subsidiaries of Chinese firms – the latest sign of growing polarisation in the global AI landscape.