ByteDance Founder Zhang Yiming Bans Model Distillation Internally, Urges Long-Termism

xiaohu · x · 2026-08-06

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming made rare remarks during an internal meeting, stressing that the company must adhere to long-termism and delayed gratification in model development, rather than relying on others' outputs for temporary leaderboard rankings.

He explicitly stated that distilling other models interferes with genuine long-term technological breakthroughs. ByteDance has reportedly strictly banned the distillation of open-source models internally, even enforcing the restriction through API detection mechanisms.

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