Independent Chinese AI video startups reportedly preparing Hong Kong listings face a single, better-resourced ByteDance platform whose October promotion cut Seedance video to RMB0.19 per second.
ByteDance has merged Xiaoyunque (小云雀), its AI short-drama creation platform, into Jimeng (即梦), its broader AI image and video creation platform, 36Kr reported in an exclusive on October 24. Both products come from the team behind Jianying, ByteDance’s video editing app known abroad as CapCut. According to 36Kr, Xiaoyunque keeps its own entry point and its product team is unchanged, while its operations now report to Chen Xinran, Jimeng’s head of operations and marketing. Jimeng has already taken on Xiaoyunque’s short-drama features.
36Kr described the move as mainly a pooling of resources. A longer version of the report, published the same day under the same headline by 36Kr’s AI channel Intelligent Emergence (智能涌现), gave the reasons: user growth at ByteDance’s AI-native apps has not produced returns that match the money spent on them, and a wave of outside video agent products is narrowing the gap between ByteDance’s own apps and everyone else’s. It said ByteDance is discussing further mergers of AI products.
ByteDance has not commented publicly. A column republished by 36Kr on October 16, when the merger was first rumored, said the company had not officially confirmed the adjustment, and no statement had appeared by the time IT Home repeated 36Kr’s report on October 24. The merger therefore rests on 36Kr’s reporting.
Two Jianying products had grown into the same workflow
Jimeng launched in May 2024 with text-to-image and text-to-video tools and later added an editable canvas and controls for setting a clip’s first and last frames, IT Home reports. Xiaoyunque took a narrower route. On March 19 it launched a short-drama agent, an AI tool that turns a script into finished episodes, which accepts scripts of up to 100,000 Chinese characters and runs on Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s own video generation model, according to the Beijing News. The agent builds the story outline, designs the characters and draws storyboards, and it tracks how a character’s age, clothing and face change across a long series.
During testing, the agent helped Chuangyi Media produce a 60-episode drama, Wan Shou Du Zun, that passed 100 million views on Douyin within four days, the Beijing News reported. Lin Bo, a manager at the producer, told Science and Technology Daily that five people finished the series in about eight days, work he said would have taken at least three to six months with earlier tools.
By autumn the two products overlapped. IT Home notes that both offer a complete path from generation to finished video, which mirrors the editing workflow inside Jianying. On September 20, Jianying launched Jianying Hub, a workspace that lets users generate material with Jimeng and Xiaoyunque and then cut it on Jianying’s timeline, according to the October 16 column.
Seedance model sales reportedly far outearn ByteDance’s own creative apps
The model behind both apps has become the stronger business. Seedance 2.0 launched in February 2026, and Xiaoyunque, Jimeng, Jianying and the Doubao assistant have competed for early access to it, according to Intelligent Emergence. An insider told Intelligent Emergence that revenue from selling Seedance as a model service through Volcano Engine far exceeds what Jimeng and Xiaoyunque earn. Many outside video agent and short-drama tools are built on Seedance as well, so ByteDance supplies the model behind some of the products competing with its own apps.
ByteDance had already been tightening Jimeng before the merger. Before China’s National Day holiday on October 1, Jimeng cut spending on its mobile app, merged the app with its web version and refocused on professional creators, with plans to grow Dreamina, its overseas version, and to sell more paid plans, Intelligent Emergence reported. Video also takes a modest share of ByteDance’s hardware: the company recently said video models use about 10% of its computing power, as it disputed a claim about AI-drama token use.
Price cuts show where the combined platform is aimed
Both apps have been cutting prices. In a promotion running October 13 to 26, Xiaoyunque brought the effective price of Seedance 2.5 video at 720p resolution down to as little as RMB0.19 per second for advanced members, and Jimeng cut its advanced individual plan to the same rate, the October 16 column reported. Xiaoyunque also plans to hand out 100 million credits over three years to creators, with top creators eligible for up to RMB50,000 in cash.
The column argued that these moves squeeze independent AI video platforms such as LibTV and Flova, which sit between models and creators. Several of those rivals have raised large rounds this year, and the column said Aishi Technology, Shengshu Technology and Yansu Technology have reportedly been preparing Hong Kong listings.
Intelligent Emergence said standalone AI video apps now have to prove themselves on user acquisition, retention and paid conversion. The next indicator is whether ByteDance merges more of its AI products, as Intelligent Emergence says it is discussing, and whether Xiaoyunque’s separate entry point survives once its features sit inside Jimeng.