Seres has teamed up with ByteDance to make robots.
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Author | Chai Xuchen
Editor | Wang Xiaojuan
China’s second largest automaker by market capitalization, Seres, is joining forces with internet giant ByteDance to move into a new sector.
Recently, Chongqing Phoenix Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Seres, signed an “Embodied Intelligence Business Cooperation Framework Agreement” with Volcano Engine, a ByteDancesubsidiary. According to the agreement, the two sides will collaborate around projects related to “intelligent robot decision-making, control, and human-machine augmentation technologies for multimodal cloud-edge collaboration.”
Although this is only a framework agreement and no further details have been disclosed, both companies have long been gearing up for embodied intelligence.
In fact, since the end of 2023, Seres has been establishing subsidiaries and registering brands, building a physical structure for its embodied intelligence business. At the end of 2023, Seres, together with the Chongqing Municipal Finance Bureau, established Chongqing Seres Phoenix Zhichuang Technology, dedicated to robotics. By September last year, Seres had applied for the “ROBOREX” trademark.
On the other hand, ByteDance’s exploration of robotics began even earlier; in 2020, founder Zhang Yiming showed interest in robots and subsequently participated in periodic robot project discussions. Since 2023, it began small-scale production of wheeled logistics robots, mainly used for transporting packages and parts in warehouses and production lines, autonomously learning, planning routes, and moving to destinations.
Obviously, both giants have a strong interest in building AI robots because they sense opportunity.
At Nvidia’s annual shareholder meeting in June this year, Jensen Huang emphasized that AI and robotics are the two biggest growth opportunities, representing multitrillion-dollar potential. Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2050, 1 billion robots will be deployed globally, reaching a market size of $5 trillion. That’s about twice the total revenue of the 20 largest car manufacturers worldwide in 2024.
Industry insiders point out that embodied intelligence requires scenarios, real-machine data, and closed-loop verification. ByteDance can provide AI technology support, including algorithms, computing power, multimodal models, etc.; Seres can offer real industry scenarios and implementation experience, providing authentic industry needs and test environments.
One company has technology, the other has practical application scenarios. ByteDance and Seres hit it off and joined hands to enter embodied intelligence. Behind this partnership, however, lies deeper anxiety for both giants.
“Compared to startups, our sensitivity to large model opportunities is noticeably insufficient.” ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo’s reflection at the start-of-year staff meeting revealed the cause of their slow deployment.
Baidu established its deep learning institute as early as 2013, launched the Wenxin large model in 2019, and by 2024 its autonomous driving service “Apollo Go” had been commercially implemented. Alibaba has listed AI as a growth engine for FY2025 and already possesses full-stack AI capabilities. In contrast, ByteDance’s core AI department, Seed, was only established in 2023, and only last year did ByteDance complete its tech platform integration by merging AILab.
On the other side, Seres also has its worries, still highly dependent on the continued success of its AITO line of vehicles.
In 2022, AITO accounted for 60% of revenue; after explosive growth in 2024, AITO revenue broke 131.9 billion yuan, making up over 90% of total revenue. In the first half of 2025, AITO’s revenue was 56.3 billion yuan, still over 90% of total revenue.
In the five years of working closely with Huawei, Seres’ market capitalization has soared from about 20 billion yuan to over 270 billion yuan, more than a twelvefold increase. Among domestic automakers, Seres is only second to BYD in market capitalization. This means Seres’s fate is deeply tied to AITO, and to Huawei itself. However, this story, along with its high valuation, seems to be approaching a ceiling.
As AITO rapidly rises, Seres’s other brands are being strategically withdrawn. Meanwhile, as Huawei’s smart car solutions circle expands, Harmony Intelligence Mobility has grown from “four que” to “five que,” with AITO no longer the sole focus, and Huawei’s star power seemingly diminishing.
Break to stand: ByteDance, wanting to make further breakthroughs in the AI track, and Seres, bound to the “Huawei concept stock,” both prepare to make a bold leap. For now, both parties are ready to exchange resources for speed in launching a major counterattack.
According to ByteDance’s previously announced AGI research project “SeedEdge,” they are preparing to explore new paths toward general intelligence and seek ways to break through the pure software limitations of current large models; at the same time, aiming for ecosystem synergy, with robots becoming a physical entry point for AI implementation.
Although ByteDance’s entry was a bit late, the Seed team’s dual-leadership structure, independent company entity, and founder’s deep involvement are notable. Co-leaders Wu Yonghui (former Google DeepMind VP of research) and Zhu Wenjia (former chief architect of Baidu’s search department) now respectively head basic research and application implementation.
Likewise, Seres, as an automaker crossing into a new field, enjoys a natural resource advantage. Intelligent vehicles themselves are much like “robots” equipped with numerous sensors and powerful computing platforms. The technical accumulations in smart assisted driving, environmental sensing, and intelligent decision-making are largely shared with robotics.
Coincidentally, automakers such as Xpeng, Xiaomi, BYD, SAIC, Changan, and Chery are all racing into the embodied intelligence track, either through in-house development, investment, or partnerships. Elon Musk even sees his humanoid robot “Optimus” as Tesla’s core value for the future, first aiming to revolutionize his own factory operations.
The humanoid robot, seen as the next trillion-dollar industry, naturally fits as the entry that giants are vying for.
CITIC Securities believes in a research report that this cooperation opens up imaginative valuation space, and Seres is expected to become "Tesla of A-shares." In the long run, it could realize an AI+automobile+robot ecosystem. As for ByteDance’s embodied intelligence business, which Zhang Yiming is personally overseeing, it also gains broad commercialization possibilities through Seres’ scenarios.
Of course, the path for embodied intelligence is a long and difficult one, facing multiple challenges in technology, cost, and commercialization. Whether this cross-sector cooperation between ByteDance and Seres will succeed still awaits the test of time.
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