(Yicai) Oct. 29 -- Chinese tech giant ByteDance is reportedly planning to build an artificial intelligence research and development center in Europe.

ByteDance has begun to hire top-notch tech talents specialized in large language models and other AI fields to enhance its capability to research and develop AI technologies in Europe, The Paper reported yesterday. The Beijing-based company has not yet responded.

Early last month, media outlets reported that ByteDance had appointed a European director to sit on its board. The person was Xavier Niel, the founder and chairperson of French internet services provider Iliad Group. The move showed the company’s intention to expand in Europe.

ByteDance started its LLM team in February last year. Led by TikTok’s product technology head Zhu Wenjia, the team focuses on language and graphic models.

The company launched its LLM Skylark in August last year and AI-powered chatbot Doubao soon after. In May, it unveiled the Doubao LLM family and started a price war, placing the products at more than 99 percent cheaper than competitors.

ByteDance has become a powerful player in the Chinese LLM industry. According to third-party data, Doubao’s monthly active users reached 27.5 million in the first half, ranking first in China by more than doubling the second-placed LLM.

Editor: Futura Costaglione