Chinese manufacturer Seres has unveiled a new car brand called “AIVA,” with the first model, the “ME7,” set to hit the market before the end of this year. Seres is targeting the mass market with prices starting above 200,000 yuan. Unlike the successful “AITO” model developed with Huawei, Seres is partnering with AI company Bytedance, parent company of TikTok. For the new brand, Bytedance subsidiary Volcano Engine is providing the Doubao language model and cockpit system, while Seres chose Deep Route AI for assisted driving. AIVA CEO Li Bo, a former Huawei executive, positioned the brand as “AI-defined driving,” stating, “First comes the AI, then the car.” The AITO brand, developed with Huawei, sold 426,000 of the 472,000 electric and hybrid vehicles Seres sold in 2025 (90%), driving Seres’ market capitalization to more than 300 billion yuan. However, this success became a risk, as observers viewed Seres merely as a hardware supplier for Huawei, a reputation the company wants to shake off.