QIAO Mu (乔木)
(former) Doubao Seed team head — dismissed June 2025 over ethics probe
QIAO Mu (乔木) was the head of ByteDance's Doubao large language model team in the Seed department. He was dismissed by ByteDance in June 2025 following an ethics probe.
An internal investigation found that he had an intimate relationship with an HRBP supporting his team, which constituted a conflict of interest under company policy. Both parties failed to declare the conflict and made false statements during the investigation.
Qiao had been at ByteDance since 2014, having previously worked at Baidu. He held a B.S. and M.S. from Xi'an Jiaotong University.
At ByteDance, he successively served as a recommendation algorithm engineer, head of Toutiao recommendations, and head of search technology before leading the Doubao LLM team. He reported to Wu Yonghui after the February 2025 reorganization.