What happened in China ByteDance is actively exploring an entry into the autonomous driving field. Rather than following the well-trodden path of building traditional robotics teams or relying solely on external suppliers, the tech giant is managing this initiative through its "world model" team. This team operates under Seed, ByteDance's foundation model research team, which was established in 2023 as a first-tier strategic department. To lead this highly strategic effort, ByteDance has placed Zhou Chang at the helm. Since joining the company in 2024, Zhou has managed multiple cutting-edge domains, including multimodal models, world models, visual generation, and embodied AI. By placing autonomous driving under his purview, ByteDance is signaling that it views self-driving not as a mechanical or hardware engineering challenge, but as a generative AI and physical-world simulation problem. This move is supported by a mature enterprise infrastructure. Volcano Engine, ByteDance's cloud and enterprise division, established its…