ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have shown combined demand for more than 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 GPUs, representing a potential order value of over $35 billion, though Nvidia may not be able to fulfill all requests and actual deliveries could be much lower.
According to Bloomberg, ByteDance is in advanced talks with MediaTek to supply custom chips, with MediaTek set to provide an undisclosed number of ASIC chips for ByteDance's data center operations. If the deal closes, ByteDance could become MediaTek's second-largest ASIC customer after Google.
On October 14, Doubao Phone Assistant disclosed the arrangements after the 30-day public comment period for its Screen Automation Operation Statement Agreement: it will gradually enable GUI automation for third-party apps, limited to apps that have not refused; it also published a list of 151 refusing apps, including WeChat, DeepSeek, Taobao, Kuaishou and Meituan, with 65 from Tencent's ecosystem, 23 from Alibaba's, 14 from Kuaishou's, 11 from Meituan's and 38 independent apps.
ByteDance's Seed lab established a new internal department, Seed Model-Alignment & Preparedness, led by Yan Lin and reporting to Wu Yonghui. The former Responsible AI team and part of the Chat team moved into it, focusing on model specification, safety evaluation, alignment training and risk monitoring, including guarding against agent escape and frontier risks such as CBRN.
Shou Zi Chew, in conversation with DBS' Xu Zhikun, said the market overestimates AI's short-term capabilities but underestimates its long-term impact. He predicted AI could drive major breakthroughs in physics and biotechnology within two to three years, warned about risks of unconstrained AI using the paperclip theory, and advocated oversight mechanisms, human-in-the-loop approaches, and firsthand use of AI tools across industries.
TikTok announced the launch of an AI shopping assistant and a one-click in-app checkout feature, allowing users to buy directly from brands in their For You feed. The conversational AI agent understands context and remembers user preferences, offering real-time shopping guidance on product details, shipping, sizing, and availability. The features are built in partnership with Salesforce, Shopify, Shoplazza, Stripe, and other commerce and payment platforms.
ByteDance Seed's Seedream 5.0 Flash has launched on OpenRouter, serving as the fast and cost-efficient tier of Seedream 5.0 for high-volume generation and low-latency interactive editing.
A Tokyo court ruled that an anonymous TikTok account's use of AI-cloned voice of voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda infringed his publicity rights, marking Japan's first such case, while dismissing a takedown request as the account had already been deleted.
Enveda, a biotech that uses AI to discover drugs from nature, has raised $311 million in a Series E led by Catalio Capital Management, with Iconiq and others participating, at a $2 billion valuation—double its valuation from 12 months earlier. Founded in 2019 by Viswa Colluru, an early Recursion Pharmaceuticals employee, the company is advancing multiple AI-discovered drug candidates into human clinical trials, including a treatment for severe skin conditions and one designed to help maintain weight loss after stopping GLP-1s.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has become Asia's richest person for the first time, with a net worth exceeding $105 billion, surpassing India's Gautam Adani. His wealth growth is attributed to TikTok's global reach and ByteDance's continued investment in AI, with wealth created by the AI boom beginning to surpass fortunes built in traditional industries.