Caitong Securities has released a research report stating that, according to an announcement on Volcano Engine's official social media account, the Seedance 2.0 API was officially opened for public beta testing to enterprise users on April 2. The launch of the Seedance 2.0 API had previously been delayed due to copyright risk pressures overseas. The opening of the Seedance 2.0 API is not expected to narrow the gap between small and medium-sized teams and leading companies in the short term; instead, it is likely to reinforce the content production capacity and quality advantages of the leading firms. The main viewpoints from Caitong Securities are as follows:

The launch of the Seedance 2.0 API was previously postponed primarily due to risks of copyright infringement overseas. According to the Seedance 2.0 API official website, the API was originally scheduled for release on February 24 of this year. However, starting from February 15, Seedance 2.0 began receiving infringement warnings from several leading overseas content companies. On February 20, the five major Hollywood studios separately issued independent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance. On February 21, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) also issued a cease-and-desist letter, referring to Seedance 2.0 as a "tool for systematic infringement." Under the pressure of copyright risks overseas, the release of the Seedance 2.0 API was delayed, and ByteDance also committed to adding security protection measures.

Although the Seedance 2.0 API is now fully open, leading companies that have already signed minimum commitment agreements still maintain significant barriers. Prior to the full opening, access to the Seedance 2.0 API was primarily granted through signing minimum commitment frameworks, initially meeting the demands of leading companies with high requirements and large usage volumes. While some customers were allowed to participate in group purchases, the minimum framework scale required was still 10 million yuan per year. Following this full API opening, the entitlements for new basic API users differ from those of existing high-tier users with minimum commitments: (1) Concurrency limits differ. Basic users have a fixed upper limit of 10 concurrent connections, which cannot be increased, whereas committed clients enjoy concurrency limits reaching several hundred. (2) Functionality differs. Committed clients possess advanced rights such as custom virtual avatar libraries, copyright compliance authorization, and real-person portrait authorization, while basic users can only utilize the platform's public virtual avatar library for secondary creation. (3) Financial thresholds differ. New basic users are still required to pay a deposit of at least 1 million yuan (whichever is higher: 50% of the prepaid amount or 1 million yuan), and the deposit will only be gradually released and become available for normal use after completing the agreed framework tasks within one year.

Risk warnings include AI-related copyright compliance risks, user growth falling short of expectations, and intensifying industry competition.