ByteDance Marches into the AI Battlefield: CapCut Becomes the Coldest Weapon.

ByteDance Marches into the AI Battlefield: CapCut Becomes the Coldest Weapon.

On December 11, 2024, Jiemian News reported that the revenue of CapCut (the overseas version of Jianying by ByteDance) grew by more than three digits. The total revenue scale is close to 10 billion yuan, and the global monthly active users exceed 800 million. In the current era when the mobile Internet traffic dividend is fading, the performance of Jianying is extremely precious. At the same time, ByteDance has raised the product priority of Dream, a one-stop AI creation platform under Jianying, and is trying to create the “TikTok of the AI era.”

Jianying was born in May 2019. Its launch is largely the prelude to the birth of domestic video editing tools. Around 2020, many investment institutions and Internet companies increased their investment in video editing tools because they saw the rapid development of the short video industry giving rise to a huge demand for editing. Moreover, previous video editing tools were not user-friendly for ordinary users. Domestic video editing tools represented by Jianying are simple to download and install, inexpensive, and have a low usage threshold. The global AI APP download list disclosed by Feifan Research shows that in October 2024, Jianying ranked second in downloads, second only to ChatGPT.

Jianying is highly sought after by video creators, which is not only related to its low usage threshold and outstanding functions but also inseparable from the strong support of TikTok, the short video overlord. In the Southeast Asian market, TikTok will induce users to download CapCut. Although Douyin deeply empowers Jianying to attract users, professional editing companies and editors are also using Jianying. Although Jianying is positioned as a mass video editing tool, it has been moving closer to professional users and has launched professional and enterprise versions. In the eyes of professional users, Jianying is not as good as Premiere Pro, but some of Jianying’s functions can improve team efficiency and are complementary to professional editing tools. For ordinary users, Jianying stands out in terms of ecological advantages. It can synchronize Douyin materials with one click, and functions such as beauty filters, material libraries, and subtitles are very useful.

In February 2024, Zhang Nan, CEO of Douyin Group, said that she will focus on the development of Jianying and is committed to helping ByteDance get the ticket to the AI era with Jianying. At present, it is difficult for AI conversation products in the technology industry to achieve a closed business loop. The management of ByteDance believes that the more ideal AI product form in the long term requires a more visual user experience and a lower usage threshold. Three months later, ByteDance launched Dream AI, which can generate high-quality images and videos through natural language and image input. At present, giants such as OpenAI and Adobe are also revolutionizing visual content creation through AI technology. At present, the visual application of AI technology mainly follows the scaling law. Increasing the number of model parameters brings stronger performance. However, due to geopolitical influences, ByteDance has difficulty purchasing Nvidia chips, and the computing power scale has reached a bottleneck, affecting the development of Dream. Under the circumstances where the “Sophon” has locked computing power, how Jianying can break through the situation tests the operational ability of ByteDance.