Seres teams up with ByteDance: Can it replicate the success of AITO?
In the last week of May 2026, an announcement of less than 400 words stirred up waves in both the automotive and technology industries.
The announcement was published on the WeChat official account of "Shapingba Release" (the certified entity is the Publicity Department of the Shapingba District Committee of Chongqing Municipality). The main content was to announce that a company named Landian Technology was officially renamed as Saitou Technology.
Image source: The official WeChat account of Shapingba Release
What really attracted attention were the two enterprises behind this restructuring - "Sai" and "Dou".
Among them, "Sai" refers to Seres, the former parent company of Landian Technology. According to a report by LatePost Auto, Saitou Technology is the legal entity of Seres' new automotive brand.
The report also said that the brand will be launched this month and is a result of in - depth cooperation between Seres and Volcengine, a subsidiary of ByteDance. Therefore, "Dou" may refer to Doubao.
"Sai" once joined hands with Huawei and achieved a remarkable turnaround with the Wenjie cars; "Dou" once launched the Doubao mobile phone, showing the industry the true appearance of a mobile phone with system - level AI capabilities.
Will the cooperation between the two sides spark new ideas? Can the new car break into the market?
The current automotive industry is more competitive. Even though the prices are recovering despite the rising storage costs, the competition among enterprises has shifted from the performance comparison of battery life, chassis, in - vehicle infotainment systems, and intelligent driving functions to the competition in higher - level technological dimensions such as the native experience of AI interaction and the efficiency of data closed - loop.
Therefore, the key point and difficulty of the cooperation between Seres and Doubao lie in whether they can replicate their past success in the current situation with more uncertain factors.
What's different about the cooperation between Doubao and Seres this time?
On an ordinary Thursday in October last year, Zhang Zhengping, the president of Seres Group, and Tan Dai, the president of Volcengine, sat at the same signing table.
At that time, Seres Phoenix and Volcengine signed an agreement on embodied intelligence cooperation. Zhang Zhengping and Tan Dai attended as witnesses of the signing ceremony. Zheng Xiangdong, the vice - mayor of the Chongqing Municipal People's Government, also appeared at the signing ceremony.
Image source: The official WeChat account of Seres Group
At that time, this signing ceremony did not attract wide attention from the market. However, a series of recent actions by Seres have made this signing regarded as the beginning of the cooperation.
Since February this year, Seres has been working with the Shapingba District Government to promote the restructuring and spin - off of its Landian Automobile. It only took about three months from the signing of the cooperation agreement to the finalization of the restructuring.
According to the announcement released by Seres, Landian Technology, a subsidiary of Seres Automobile (Hubei) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Saihu Company), completed a capital increase and share expansion of about 6.671 billion yuan. After this capital increase and share expansion, Shaci Zhiyuan, a local state - owned enterprise in Chongqing, invested 3.433 billion yuan and became the largest shareholder of Landian Technology, holding a 34.5% stake; Saihu Company held 32.96% of the shares and became the second - largest shareholder.
This means that Seres gave up the controlling stake in Landian Technology. Landian Technology has become a state - owned - controlled enterprise and is no longer included in Seres' consolidated financial statements.
On May 29, with the official renaming of Landian Technology, the other protagonist behind this restructuring, Doubao, emerged, and some information related to the cooperation was gradually released.
According to a report by Lanjinger News, an informed source revealed that the first model under Saitou Technology is expected to be launched this year. It is positioned as a crossover vehicle - between an SUV and a sedan, and both pure - electric and extended - range versions will be available. The car is expected to be produced at the Seres Phoenix Factory, which is currently in the process of re - tooling.
The above - mentioned informed source said, "The relevant models of Saitou Technology mainly cooperate with Volcengine on the in - vehicle infotainment interaction large - model, and the two sides will have regular exchanges. It is expected that the intelligent driving solution will not use Huawei's Qiankun."
A report by LatePost Auto revealed some specific information about the new brand of Saitou Technology.
The report said that the new brand is positioned as young and sporty and will be launched in June. Seres and Volcengine, a subsidiary of ByteDance, will cooperate deeply. The new brand has a dedicated sales channel, and the products will be sold in both domestic and overseas markets. Currently, Seres has established teams in the fields of marketing and channels.
The report also said that ByteDance internally refers to this project as "Project A", and the person in charge is Yang Liwei, the vice - president of Volcengine. On the Seres side, this project belongs to the Global Business Department under the Overseas BU, and it was initially negotiated by Li Bo, the president of the Overseas Business Department.
Currently, the cooperation details between the two sides have not been finalized, but Volcengine's involvement this time will be deeper than its previous cooperation with SAIC Roewe, which was a "joint definition and joint development" model.
From this information, several key points can be summarized.
In addition to the high - level attention from both ByteDance and Seres, the cooperation model between the two sides may also be unusual.
In the past few years, the cooperation between technology companies and automobile manufacturers can be roughly classified into several categories: standard component delivery in the form of suppliers, full - stack solution packaging, ecological platform access, and joint R & D for specific projects.
But in essence, they are all "layering" a layer of AI capabilities on the existing vehicle architecture, and technology providers rarely have access to the core of vehicle definition.
Recently, ByteDance has been trying to break through this model. For example, through Volcengine, it established a joint R & D project team with SAIC Roewe from the early stage of product design, incorporated the AI interaction experience into the vehicle development framework, built more than 2,000 SOA full - domain service interfaces, and jointly launched the industry's first AI - native technology architecture "CPP".
Image source: The official WeChat account of Roewe
This means that technology providers can no longer be passive suppliers of functions but can be co - builders with a say in the product definition stage. This in - depth cooperation can be regarded as the prototype of the "AI - defined vehicle" model.
According to the report by LatePost Auto, Volcengine's involvement this time will be deeper than its previous cooperation with SAIC Roewe, which means that ByteDance may gain more say in the definition of the underlying system, the coordination of the electronic and electrical architecture, and even the product definition.
In addition, from the equity structure of Saitou Technology, it can be seen that Seres and ByteDance are trying to establish a new cooperation ecosystem with this company as the carrier.
Seres gave up the controlling stake in Saitou Technology and relinquished the unilateral dominance. As a third - party balancing force, state - owned capital can, to some extent, allow ByteDance to be more deeply involved as a "technology co - builder".
Although ByteDance has not appeared on the list of the top five shareholders, it can gain system - level say in core areas such as brand naming, technology roadmap, and product definition. This cooperation structure has few precedents in the past automotive industry.
These differences have made the future of this new brand more worthy of attention.
Seres and Doubao, meeting each other's needs
From the content of the cooperation agreement mentioned above, it can be seen that the new brand to be launched by Saitou Technology is the former Landian Automobile under Seres.
In March 2023, Seres officially launched Landian Automobile, targeting the mass - market family car segment priced between 100,000 and 150,000 yuan. The first model, Landian E5, was also launched simultaneously, positioned as a plug - in hybrid mid - size SUV, equipped with the Fudi plug - in hybrid system. A total of 2 configurations and 4 models were launched, with the lowest price starting from 139,900 yuan.
During that time, the Wenjie M7, jointly developed by Seres and Huawei, became extremely popular. In less than a month after its launch, the order volume exceeded 50,000 units.
Landian Automobile was Seres' second independent move, which was expected to work together with Wenjie to cover the market from the mid - low - end to the high - end, filling the gap in Seres' mass - market family car segment.
Image source: The official website of Landian Automobile
On the other side of the market, Volcengine, the cloud service brand under ByteDance, has been established for three years. This brand, which established an automotive industry line from the beginning, had launched three cloud services: intelligent driving cloud, intelligent cockpit cloud, and intelligent marketing cloud, providing full - stack cloud solutions, and had established cooperation with Mercedes - Benz, being first introduced into Mercedes - Benz's intelligent cockpit system.
However, in 2024, the development paths of Landian Automobile and ByteDance's automotive business began to diverge.
Due to the explosion of large AI models in 2024, the demand for AI in vehicles became increasingly obvious, and Volcengine gradually emerged in the automotive industry.
In this year, Volcengine launched products such as the Doubao large - model family, Volcano Ark 2.0, AI applications, and AI cloud infrastructure, which were mainly applied to intelligent cockpit interaction. It also reached cooperation agreements with several automobile manufacturers, providing intelligent cockpit solutions driven by the Doubao large model.
Image source: The official website of Volcengine
In 2025, the new Roewe M7 DMH, the world's first vehicle equipped with the Doubao in - depth thinking large model, was officially launched. This product enabled the intelligent cockpit to achieve a leap from command - based interaction to natural human - machine interaction, which means that Doubao's capabilities in semantic understanding, memory continuity, and complex vehicle control in the in - vehicle scenario were further verified.
This year, Doubao also released a new - generation automotive AI solution at the Beijing Auto Show, proposing the "automotive brain" strategy, which enables the AI brain to deeply integrate with the whole vehicle, connecting key functional domains such as vehicle control, navigation, and intelligent driving. At the same time, it announced that more than 7 million intelligent vehicles are equipped with the Doubao large model, covering more than 50 brands and 145 models, with an average of more than 30 million interactions per day.
On the other hand, the sales volume of Landian Automobile almost stagnated at around 1,000 units. Although Seres upgraded the power and intelligence of the Landian E5 in early 2025, enhancing the intelligent cockpit and pure - electric battery life of subsequent products, it has not been able to achieve scale due to limitations in brand awareness and distribution network.
According to data from Pacific Auto Network, the sales volume of Landian Automobile in 2025 was less than 20,000 units. In 2026, the average monthly sales volume of the Landian E5 Plus was about 500 units.
Models in the 100,000 - 150,000 - yuan price range are often the "sales mainstays" in a brand. According to data from institutions such as the China Passenger Car Association, the 100,000 - 200,000 - yuan price range is the segment with the highest market share in the Chinese automotive market, accounting for usually more than 30% - 40%, with an annual sales volume reaching millions of units.
Therefore, Landian Automobile needs a powerful technology partner to carry out a comprehensive innovation. Doubao may bring a leap in AI capabilities to Landian Technology, helping it gain a technological label and create a differentiated advantage in the highly competitive 100,000 - 150,000 - yuan market.
For Doubao, as an underlying technology provider, it has made a successful attempt in the mobile phone industry - launching a mobile phone product that can perform complex tasks across applications with just one sentence.
Although Doubao has been installed in more than 7 million vehicles, its presence in the automotive industry is still not high, and in - depth co - creation cases like the one with SAIC Roewe are also rare. Doubao needs a deep - level partner to jointly define the brand and verify the business model of AI - native automobiles.
Like Landian Automobile, Doubao also needs to create a "Doubao mobile phone" moment in the automotive industry.
Can Seres and Doubao replicate the success of Wenjie?
In addition to the role Doubao will play in this cooperation, the market also has another expectation for Seres.
This enterprise once cooperated with Huawei to develop Wenjie, the first of the "Five Realms" of Hongmeng Smart Mobility, and it is also the most successful realm in terms of sales volume in the Hongmeng system.
As of January 2026, the cumulative delivery volume of the entire Wenjie series has exceeded 1 million units. According to official data from Hongmeng Smart Mobility, from January to May 2026, the cumulative retail volume of Wenjie was about 145,100 units, accounting for about 75.7% of the cumulative sales volume of the entire Hongmeng Smart Mobility series.
It can be said that Wenjie is a successful example of in - depth cooperation between a technology company and an automobile manufacturer.
