ByteDance's hardware ambitions are hidden in Doubao.
ByteDance has begun to increase its investment in hardware. According to Caixin, recently, through the Doubao large model, ByteDance has successively connected to or self-developed multiple categories of hardware products, including mobile phones, cars, robots, smart glasses, and learning machines.
A person close to ByteDance told Caixin that currently, Doubao is conducting research and testing on an intelligent operating system for cars, with a model similar to Huawei's cooperation with Seres. It is expected to be released and launched on the market next year. Another informed person mentioned that ByteDance is also developing the Doubao AI mobile phone, aiming to find a hardware carrier for ByteDance's AI capabilities. The OEM partner for the mobile phone is ZTE Technology.
In addition, the aforementioned person close to ByteDance also mentioned that ByteDance has considered opening offline stores in the future to display and sell relevant hardware products, but no final decision has been made yet. The person in charge of Doubao did not respond to the question of whether to open offline stores.
Regarding the Doubao mobile phone, the person in charge of Doubao responded to Caixin that Doubao currently has no plan to launch its own mobile phone products. "Doubao is continuously exploring ways to open up its AI capabilities to various hardware manufacturers, including mobile phone manufacturers. In this process, we will try to provide complete solutions with some partners, but all cooperation does not involve the research, development, and launch of our own mobile phone products."
Previously, there were reports that ByteDance would build the "Doubao Car." This plan would collaborate with the automotive cloud business of ByteDance's Volcengine, providing intelligent driving terminal solutions for smart cars around the two major sectors of "cockpit + intelligent driving," targeting the layout of software solutions in Huawei's HarmonyOS Smart Mobility. In response, the person in charge of Volcengine said that the rumored "Doubao Car" is purely a rumor. Volcengine provides efficient algorithm training platforms for many automotive customers and does not have its own intelligent driving business plan.
Since the end of 2022, when the era of large models began, ByteDance has been one of the Chinese technology companies that have invested the most in AI. In August 2023, ByteDance launched the large model Doubao AI. One year later, in September 2024, Doubao became the first AI large model application in China with a total download volume exceeding 100 million. In that month, the monthly active users of the Doubao App exceeded 47 million, making it the second-largest large model application in terms of global users at that time, second only to ChatGPT.
ByteDance began to attempt to layout in hardware as early as 2019, but it was not successful. Multiple ByteDance employees told Caixin that they believe ByteDance's advantages lie in software and application products, and it pursues rapid growth and iteration of applications. However, hardware requires long-term investment and the results are slow to appear, which is not ByteDance's strong suit.
At the ByteDance all-hands meeting in February 2025, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo mentioned that the goals of ByteDance's AI in 2025 are to pursue the upper limit of intelligence, explore new interactions, and strengthen economies of scale. Previously, many AI industry insiders mentioned that if no new forms of intelligent devices emerge, smartphones will be the main carrier for the new AI interaction mode in the next stage.
Chinese technology companies have always aimed for "integration of software and hardware." In addition to ByteDance, companies such as Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba have also successively tried to develop in the hardware direction, but most of their products have been short-lived. This time, leveraging the industry advantage established by Doubao AI, ByteDance is making another effort in hardware. A Doubao employee told Caixin that currently, the most important direction for ByteDance is AI. Many business directions and models have emerged around AI, and hardware is a relatively slow-developing direction. Future adjustments will depend on the progress of specific projects.
The employee also mentioned that based on the overall investment in AI by ByteDance, hardware is just a very small part of it.
ByteDance's Hardware Ecosystem
The team responsible for AI hardware at ByteDance is Ocean, which belongs to the ByteDance AI product team Flow. The person in charge of Ocean is Liu Chengcheng, who was the founder of the technology media 36Kr and later founded a domestic operating system company. In 2022, after the startup was acquired by ByteDance, Liu Chengcheng joined ByteDance as the person in charge of the AI hardware business, reporting to Zhu Jun, the person in charge of Flow.
Currently within ByteDance, the Flow team is at the same level as the Douyin team.
ByteDance's current layout for smart hardware mainly includes three aspects: external investment, cooperation with hardware manufacturers, and self-development.
Since 2019, ByteDance has started to invest in hardware companies externally. In 2019, ByteDance acquired the R & D team of Smartisan Mobile, hoping to create educational hardware products. In 2020, ByteDance launched the Dali Smart Homework Lamp, which had good sales for a while after its launch, but there was no significant increase in sales later. After 2022, no new versions of the Dali Smart Lamp were released.
In 2021, ByteDance acquired the VR company PICO for 9 billion yuan. After PICO joined ByteDance, it not only sold products but also cooperated with ByteDance's game business, Zhaoxi Guangnian. In November 2023, PICO announced an organizational structure adjustment and significant layoffs. At that time, Zhou Hongwei, the president of PICO, said, "We were relatively optimistic about the development of the industry and the market, but in fact, it didn't progress as fast as expected."
From these two acquisitions, it can be seen that ByteDance's early investment in hardware was based on business synergy. The Dali Smart Lamp was developed because ByteDance once regarded the education business as one of its key businesses. Later, when the online education business shrank, the product was also affected. When acquiring PICO, ByteDance's game business was also a key direction. However, ByteDance failed to achieve "integration of software and hardware" in these two directions.
A ByteDance employee told Caixin that the development rhythms of software and hardware are different. Hardware requires supply chain resources, and the upfront costs are much higher, but there is no guarantee of ROI (Return on Investment). Moreover, "once a product is developed with a large amount of R & D investment and enters the market, it can be quickly copied at low cost by other companies."
After the explosion of AI large models, ByteDance started a new hardware layout. In 2024, ByteDance acquired the headphone manufacturer Oladance. In October 2024, ByteDance released the smart headphone Ola Friend. At the 2024 Volcengine Conference, ByteDance also showcased three AI hardware products jointly developed with external partners, namely a robot dog, a learning machine, and a learning robot.
In addition, according to LatePost, since 2023, ByteDance has mass-produced over a thousand logistics robots, which currently mainly serve Douyin's e-commerce warehouses and have also had some external cooperation, such as with SF Express and BYD Electronic.
However, compared with mobile phones and cars, the above attempts can only be regarded as "small efforts." If AI is to be implemented on hardware carriers, smartphones and smart cars are the most core battlefields.
Data from the international data agency IDC shows that in the first half of 2025, the shipment volume of smartphones in the Chinese market was 140 million units. IDC predicts that in 2025, the shipment volume of smart cars in the Chinese market will reach 25 million units. In contrast, the annual shipment volume of the currently very popular humanoid robots is only about tens of thousands of units.
Whether ByteDance can make greater progress in the hardware field depends on whether it can achieve results in the mobile phone and car sectors. However, these two fields are already very mature, with multiple manufacturers having both software and hardware capabilities.
After 2022, almost all leading mobile phone and car manufacturers have embraced large models. Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo all have self-developed large models. Traditional car manufacturers mostly choose external cooperation. Traditional car companies, including FAW, Changan, Dongfeng, SAIC, GAC, and BAIC, have all cooperated with Huawei. SAIC-GM has made an external investment in Momenta, and the two companies have also reached a strategic cooperation. New - energy car companies, including NIO, Li Auto, and XPeng, have all released self-developed large models.
The person in charge of Volcengine told Caixin that after Volcengine released the Doubao large model in 2024, it has been continuously opening up the capabilities of the Doubao model to hardware manufacturers. Currently, most of the mainstream car and mobile phone manufacturers in the domestic market have accessed the Doubao large model through Volcengine.
According to Caixin, the application of the Doubao large model in mobile phones and cars at ByteDance is still in the initial stage, and it has not been decided whether to self - develop or cooperate externally. A ByteDance employee mentioned, "Currently, we are trying all directions to see which one is more valuable and then make further plans."
Can ByteDance Create New AI Hardware?
ByteDance's current advantage lies in its AI capabilities, including computing power, data centers, basic models, and multimodal models.
In January 2025, ByteDance adjusted its AI strategy and announced a long - term research plan for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) codenamed "Seed Edge." ByteDance hopes to fully cover the entire process from basic research to technology R & D and product application.
ByteDance's AI capabilities are among the top in the Chinese market, but there is still a long way to go from having AI capabilities to implementing them in AI hardware.
The current representative case of ByteDance's AI application in hardware is the robot. In July this year, ByteDance launched the Seed GR - 3 model, which is mainly applied to embodied intelligence. ByteDance introduced that this model has the ability to generalize to new objects and environments, can understand language instructions containing abstract concepts, and can also precisely manipulate flexible objects. At the same time, ByteDance also developed a robot body. ByteDance said that through the GR - 3 model, the robot can efficiently handle complex tasks in real environments.
A ByteDance technology employee told Caixin that currently, the R & D of Seed in robots is still in the scientific research stage, mainly in cooperation with universities.
Although robots are very popular, it will take time for them to be popularized in the market. Although robots place more emphasis on model capabilities, there are still many immature links in the supply chain, which require continuous improvement through generations of products. Smartphone manufacturers, which are more large - scale, attach greater importance to AI capabilities. Therefore, they will choose to self - develop and cooperate with some smaller AI startups to ensure that they have control over the core.
Cars may become an important part of ByteDance's breakthrough in the hardware ecosystem. Currently, Doubao has collaborated with Volcengine to connect with many car manufacturers, and Volcengine has already accumulated some car customers before.
A securities firm's automotive analyst told Caixin that today's technology companies cannot succeed by only focusing on software or hardware. If a car company can only build cars, no matter how well it builds them, it is difficult to have a valuation premium. ByteDance needs to get involved in hardware, and other Internet companies also need to have a sense of crisis. In comparison, robots are a long - term goal, while cars are more achievable in the near future.
A Doubao employee mentioned that in the past year or so, he has been communicating with customers in the market about the possibility of AI hardware, but the progress has not been smooth. The core reason is that hardware requires long - term investment, heavy input, and the return is unclear. Many customers are still hesitant. Compared with software, customers are much more cautious about hardware.
He said, "Currently, ByteDance's situation in hardware is that none of the previous attempts have been successful, but hardware is something that must be done."
This article is from the WeChat official account "Half - Baked Finance" (ID: Banshu - Caijing). The author is Liu Yiqin, and it is published by 36Kr with permission.