Recently, media reports stated that ByteDance has established a new first-level department called "AI Data and Security," which is parallel to departments such as Seed, Flow, and Douyin, and is led by Wang Yinglei (Adam Wang), the head of the TikTok platform responsibility team and former head of TikTok live streaming. ByteDance has not yet responded as of the time of this report.

According to the report, one of the predecessors of this department was the Global Data team established by Fuyue (Yuyi), a member of the TikTok founding team, in 2023, with an original scale of about 100 people. This integration also involves the group's data middle platform DMC, as well as the AI data platform AIDP under Flow, which were previously scattered data teams. The related integration and new department establishment started in early June 2026 and are still ongoing in terms of organizational restructuring and personnel optimization.

ByteDance, Toutiao

The integrated AI Data and Security department will become a large data organization spanning base models and business teams. Its core responsibilities are to provide cross-modal data services for all large models under ByteDance, covering the entire data production process, including data standard formulation, data sourcing and procurement, synthesis and cleaning, quality evaluation, and other aspects.

This organizational adjustment takes place against the backdrop of ByteDance's continued increased investment in AI. Previously, 36Kr reported that ByteDance will focus on world models, video generation, coding, and the commercialization of Doubao in 2026, and continue to increase investments in related training data. The establishment of the new department indicates that ByteDance is further concentrating data resources and production capabilities to support the training needs of multi-modal large models and different business scenarios, and also shows that data engineering and data quality have become important infrastructure in the competition of large models.