At this critical turning point where AI is moving from technical demonstrations to industrial applications, Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine, made a bold prediction at the 2025 FORCE Original Power Conference: the market size of large models is expected to grow tenfold in 2026. He emphasized that competition between enterprises should not be a zero-sum game of "survival of the fittest," but rather focus on jointly expanding the market and accelerating industry AI adoption.
"Next year, the core of competition will not be about capturing existing market share, but about how to grow the overall pie together," Tan Dai emphasized. He believes that AI has entered the pre-peak period of large-scale application in 2025. The key indicator to measure this process is the number of Tokens calls — "the value of a model can only be verified and released through real usage."
Regarding the current hot topic of AI phones and other terminals, Tan Dai remains rational: "The industry is still in its early stages. For users, whether the platform is an Agent or an APP doesn't matter; what matters is whether it can more conveniently and cost-effectively meet their needs." He pointed out that there are still massive demands in daily life that are not efficiently addressed, and the true value of AI lies in improving the efficiency of solving these demands, rather than piling up technical concepts.
Tan Dai defined 2025 as the "Agent" year and predicted that 2026 will see a full-scale explosion. Currently, agents have already been applied in scenarios such as office automation, short video generation, and video creation. Next year, their functions will become more powerful, and their applications will be deeper. Especially in the enterprise sector, agents are undergoing two major breakthroughs:
- Breadth Breakthrough: The average number of agents deployed by enterprises will jump from dozens in 2024 to hundreds in 2025, with top companies even surpassing thousands;
- Depth Breakthrough: From initial lightweight trials, agents are gradually penetrating into serious ToB production environments, even entering high-proficiency fields such as research and engineering, truly unlocking business value.
As an intelligent technology brand under ByteDance, Volcano Engine is driving AI from being "usable" to "easy to use and commonly used," with Doubao large model as its engine. Tan Dai's judgment reflects both an insight into industry trends and a clear signal: in the next phase of AI popularization, ecological collaboration, scenario deepening, and value co-creation will replace purely technical arms races, becoming the key to success.
When the wave of tenfold market growth comes, the real winners may not be the fastest ones, but those who know best how to build ships together with partners and sail the seas together.
