ByteDance AI model's latest edition undercuts DeepSeek pricing by over 60pc

Chinese tech giant ByteDance officially launched a new version of its artificial intelligence model Doubao 1.6, slashing its prices by more than 60 percent compared to those of competitor DeepSeek.

The TikTok owner unveiled the starting price of the latest version of the self-developed model set at 2.6 yuan (HK$2.84) per million tokens, or units of data processed by the large language model.

ByteDance said the price is 63 percent lower than the 7 yuan per one million tokens charged by its previous version Doubao 1.5 and DeepSeek R1 – a rising AI startup that once triggered a selloff of US chip giant Nvidia’s shares with its low-cost model in January.

Chinese AI developers once launched a price war in May 2024 in a bid to seize data and market shares in the early stage of the industry.

STAFF REPORTER