Gasgoo Munich-Seres recently announced that its subsidiary Landian Technology has completed a 6.671 billion yuan capital increase. The round attracted a consortium including Chongqing state-owned assets, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CATL called Wending Investment, as well as Bojun Technology and Xingyu Shares. Following the increase, Seres’ stake fell to 32.96%, and Landian will no longer be consolidated—making Chongqing state assets the largest shareholder.
This pivotal transaction—a mix of spin-off and capital introduction—marks a decisive move by Seres to sharpen its strategic focus, while also serving as a major move by industrial capital to reshape the competitive landscape.
Seres Streamlines Strategy
Launched by Seres in 2023, Landian Technology targets the mass-market segment between 100,000 and 150,000 yuan, originally designed to complement the high-end AITO brand and cover a broader price range. Its debut model, the Landian E5, entered the plug-in hybrid SUV market at 99,800 yuan, positioning itself as price-competitive with gasoline vehicles. The lineup later expanded to include the E3 and E5 PLUS, pushing into the 150,000 yuan bracket.
Image Source: Landian
Yet Landian entered a highly competitive market. The 100,000 yuan category is a sector of intense competition for domestic brands, where giants like BYD and Geely leverage scale, distribution, and cost barriers to dominate. As a latecomer, Landian suffered from weak brand recognition, low channel density, and heavy reliance on single models, resulting in persistently sluggish performance. With full-year 2025 sales barely topping 20,000 units—averaging just over 1,000 a month—the brand fell far short of its break-even point, becoming a long-term burden on group resources.
Given Landian’s operational reality and the group’s broader development plan, Seres decided to cede controlling rights, centering the move on three core dimensions: strategic layout, financial health, and internal governance.
Strategically, Seres is concentrating all resources on the high-end segment. AITO is now the group’s core growth engine, with 2025 deliveries exceeding 400,000 units. High-end models like the AITO M9 generate strong profits, serving as the group’s primary income source.
Operating two brands simultaneously inevitably disperses resources across R&D, supply chains, and sales channels, while also consuming management resources. Spinning off Landian effectively sheds this development burden, allowing Seres to operate more efficiently and concentrate all its resources into AITO to secure its position in the high-end intelligent vehicle market.
Image Source: Landian
On the financial front, Landian has been chronically unprofitable, and its inclusion in consolidated statements has weighed on the group’s earnings. Following the equity adjustment, Landian will be reclassified as an associate company and removed from the consolidation scope. This means its operating losses will no longer flow through to the listed entity, effectively improving Seres’ balance sheet.
From a governance perspective, AITO targets the premium market above 250,000 yuan, while Landian operates in the 100,000 yuan mass market. The user bases and operational logic for the two differ significantly, and running them in parallel risks internal friction. The spin-off allows for independent operation: Seres can pursue the high-end market, while Landian leverages its new shareholders’ resources to explore a differentiated path, eliminating brand positioning conflicts entirely.
CATL Bets Big
The composition of the 6.671 billion yuan capital increase is clear: Chongqing state-backed Shaci Zhiyuan invested 3.43 billion yuan for a 34.5% stake, becoming the largest shareholder. An employee stock ownership platform, Yuexing Jiasheng, holds 16.48%. CATL’s Wending Investment contributed 984 million yuan for a 9.89% stake, while Bojun Technology and Xingyu Shares invested 512 million yuan and 102 million yuan, taking 5.15% and 1.03% stakes, respectively.
Image Source: Seres Announcement
This combination—state backing, employee ownership, the presence of a battery giant, and parts leaders—gives Landian a unique mix of policy support, team incentives, supply chain advantages, and ample cash flow, laying a solid foundation for its future independent development.
The entry of industrial capital, particularly CATL’s significant strategic investment, reflects a strategic move based on industry dynamics and long-term supply chain positioning.
As the largest volume segment for consumer passenger vehicles in China, the 100,000 to 150,000 yuan mainstream market continues to drive massive demand for power batteries and remains a core source of industry growth. Although Landian’s current volume is limited, the equity restructuring and substantial capital infusion—combined with Chongqing’s local industrial policies and Seres’ existing resources—point to clear potential for future expansion.
CATL’s move is essentially about locking in stable downstream orders early and securing market share in the mainstream EV sector.
At the same time, taking a stake in Landian extends CATL’s strategy of binding with automakers. In recent years, CATL has increasingly used equity partnerships to penetrate the OEM side, building deep ties with multiple automakers and gradually shifting from a standalone battery supplier to a strategic partner across the supply chain.
Image Source: Landian
Through deep equity ties, CATL can achieve integrated cooperation with Landian on battery adaptation, joint model development, and cost optimization. This further secures its supply chain orders and boosts both upstream-downstream synergy and overall bargaining power.
Regionally, Landian is rooted in Chongqing, home to one of China’s most mature automotive clusters, boasting a complete supply chain and strong policy support. This investment allows CATL to reinforce its industrial layout in the Southwest, getting closer to production bases to cut logistics and supporting costs while responding faster to local manufacturing needs.
In terms of market positioning, the investment helps CATL optimize its customer mix and hedge against cyclical risks. Currently, its cooperative resources are heavily concentrated in the high-end NEV segment, where market volatility and competitive pressure are intense.
By backing Landian, a player in the mass market, CATL now spans both the premium and mainstream sectors, optimizing its downstream customer portfolio. This effectively reduces dependence on a single high-end market and strengthens overall resilience against market swings.
On one side, Seres is actively streamlining, shedding non-core assets to focus on its high-end main business and concentrate resources on new goals. On the other, industrial capital is joining forces to pour capital, technology, and supply chain resources into Landian, rebuilding its foundation.
This exchange does more than reshape Landian’s future; it reflects a distinct trend in the new energy sector: leading automakers are accelerating brand streamlining and resource concentration, while upstream and downstream players are deepening collaboration through equity ties. For Landian, the equity overhaul is just the beginning of a new journey. Whether it can break through its sales bottleneck and fix shortcomings in products and channels remains an outcome that depends on market response.
