Guo Daya, with an annual salary of nearly 10 million yuan, joined ByteDance's Seed as the agent lead. Alibaba and Tencent had previously competed for him simultaneously.

According to Dongcha Beating's monitoring, a LatePost exclusive report confirmed that former DeepSeek researcher Guo Daya has joined ByteDance's large model development team Seed as one of the agent leads, with a rank of L8. His total compensation package consists of cash, byte options, and bean stock, which will be fully vested upon meeting certain conditions. LatePost estimates that if the bean stock price continues to rise, the total income after the four-year vesting period could reach hundreds of millions, equivalent to nearly tens of millions annually.

Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance successively approached Guo Daya, with Alibaba even offering him the post-training lead position. He ultimately chose ByteDance mainly because of the alignment in research direction: he had planned to leave DeepSeek since October last year, partly due to his optimism about the agent direction, while DeepSeek internally did not prioritize agents at that time.

Prior to this, the only person at this level of treatment was Yao Shunyu, who was brought in by Tencent to take charge in a crisis situation, while Guo Daya, as one of the agent leads, received similar treatment, indicating that the strategic importance of the agent direction within tech giants has significantly increased. With his joining, internal organization integration for agents and Coding is underway within Seed. LatePost cited an employee close to the team saying that by the end of 2025, whenever ByteDance trains a Code model, "it's always said to be the last time." In late January this year, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo listed AI model capability as a "top priority" for 2026 during an all-hands meeting, and the nearly tens of millions investment in Guo Daya is a direct reflection of this shift.