Sources: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming told employees at an all-hands last month that the company will not use model distillation to accelerate capabilities
THE SO WHAT
Refusing to lean on distillation is a bet on raw capability and research purity over speed and cost. For operators, it’s a reminder to separate vendor model strategy from your own deployment needs—your stack may still need distilled or smaller models even if your upstream supplier deprioritizes them.
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