Alibaba’s RynnBrain, ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 are among new China AIs

While U.S. markets have been focused on the impact of Anthropic and Altruist’s tools on software and financial services, China’s tech giants have released AI models this week that have shown advancements in robotics and video generation.

Alibaba, TikTok creator ByteDance and short-video platform Kuaishou, have all released new AI models that underscore how Chinese firms are keeping up with those in the U.S.

It comes after Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis told CNBC that Chinese AI models are just “months” behind Western rivals.

These models from China are directly competing with video generation models such as OpenAI’s Sora, as well as robotics models from Nvidia and Google.

Here’s a rundown of the models.

Alibaba’s DAMO Academy unveiled RynnBrain this week, an AI model designed to help robots comprehend the physical world around them and identify objects.

In a video demo, Alibaba showed a robot with pincers for hands that appeared to be able to count oranges, pick them up and place them in a basket. It was also shown taking milk out of a fridge.

Models require extensive training to enable them to identify everyday objects to interact with, which means that simple tasks like picking up fruit can be challenging in robotics.

RynnBrain now puts Alibaba in competition with the likes of Nvidia and Google which are developing their own AI models for robots.

“One of its key innovations is built-in time and space awareness,” Adina Yakefu, a researcher at Hugging Face, told CNBC.

“Instead of simply reacting to immediate inputs, the robot can remember when and where events occurred, track task progress, and continue across multiple steps. This makes it more reliable and coherent in complex real-world environments.”

Yakefu added that Alibaba’s “broader ambition” was to “establish a foundational intelligence layer for embodied systems.”