Produced by | Bullet Finance

Art Editor | Xing Jing

Reviewed by | Song Wen

In 2018, sales in the Chinese auto market exceeded 28 million vehicles. That year, BYD became the first company to surpass 500,000 units in new energy vehicle (NEV) production and sales, turning the aspiration for China's NEV market to "overtake on curves" into reality.

The industrial chain has also been reshaped by the growth of China's NEV market.

From vehicle manufacturing to intelligent driving, smart cockpits, and upstream sectors like chip semiconductors, intelligent manufacturing, and industrial internet, startups have mushroomed.

A few years later, Bosch's corporate venture capital arm, Bosch Venture Capital, established a branch in Shanghai and launched a new market-driven investment platform—Bosch China Growth Capital (BCGC). As Bosch's sole external fundraising investment platform globally, BCGC aims to identify startups through strategic synergy and financial investment.

Prior to this, Bosch Group reigned supreme in automotive components, serving as a key partner for nearly all OEMs. However, this glory has faded amid the electrification transition led by the Chinese market.

(Image/Bosch official website)

The sheer disruptive power of China's NEV market has somewhat overshadowed Bosch's financial reports.

In FY2025, Bosch Group continued to face "pressure" from electrification transition and corporate restructuring, with revenue growth failing to translate into profit gains. The group's EBIT margin hit a historic low of 2%.

The specter of layoffs and asset impairments continues to loom over Bosch.

Bosch needs a new growth engine—the strong driving force of the Chinese market. This force stems not only from Bosch China's rapid adaptation to electrification but also from its investment arm's "negotiation" in the market.

Unlike a comprehensive business transformation, BCGC only needs a "golden touch" to strengthen Bosch's local footprint in electrification and intelligence.

Against the backdrop of sluggish expansion in core automotive businesses, Bosch indeed requires alternative business models to position Bosch China more favorably in the industrial chain. By leveraging localized investments and partnerships, it seeks new growth avenues beyond traditional components.

1. Financial 'Darkest Hour'

FY2025 marks a historic "darkest hour" for Bosch Group. As the global automotive industry's electrification wave surges, this century-old industrial giant is caught in turbulent transition waters.

The numbers in the financial report silently narrate the harsh market environment: despite a slight increase in annual sales to €91 billion, the EBIT margin plummeted to a historic low of around 2%.

This is not only well below the company's long-term profit target of 7% but also the worst record since the 2008 financial crisis.

Behind the bleak appearance (Chinese term kept for context, meaning 'surface appearance') of "revenue growth without profit increase" lie triple pressures: global macroeconomic volatility, billions of euros in restructuring costs, and massive investments in electrification transition.

The core automotive business also faces unprecedented structural crises. Traditional strengths are losing momentum, fading rapidly under the wheel of time. The massive production capacity accumulated over the years has become a heavy burden.

As Bosch's core pillar, the Intelligent Mobility segment reported €55.8 billion in revenue in 2025. Affected by electrification transition investments, fierce industry price wars, and shrinking sales, its actual profit margin shrank sharply to around 2%, far below Bosch's expected standard of about 7%.

Among other segments, the Consumer Goods business saw a 1.9% YoY revenue decline to €19.9 billion due to weak global consumer spending, with a profit margin of about 2.5%. Industrial Technology performed relatively robust (Chinese term kept for context, meaning 'stable'), with an operating profit margin of around 3.5%. The Energy and Building Technology segment achieved 13.0% revenue growth to €8.5 billion but incurred a €260 million loss.

In fact, the collapse in demand for traditional fuel vehicle components, coupled with the high-investment phase of electrification and intelligence businesses, along with soaring manufacturing costs in Germany, has forced Bosch to slash labor costs on a massive scale to "survive the storm."

To fill the profit "black hole" caused by the automotive business's sharp decline, Bosch has wielded the layoff axe globally, planning to cut about 22,000 jobs by 2030 to secure future survival.

Throughout this nearly five-year layoff campaign, Bosch has had to set aside huge funds for global layoffs and business restructuring, directly eroding most operating profits.

Legacy businesses are shrinking, while new tracks like electric drives and intelligent driving remain in their "money-burning" ramp-up phase.

In this global winter, the Chinese market is no longer a hassle-free safe haven for Bosch.

According to internal sources, Bosch China also optimized personnel at its Wuxi site, affecting nearly 200 people, mainly in traditional fuel vehicle projects and hydrogen fuel cell initiatives.

In response, Bosch China President Xu Daquan repeatedly stated that adjustments to around 200 people in traditional business units within a company of over 57,000 employees are part of "normal operational deepening" amid the automotive industry's transformation, which has been misinterpreted as "layoffs" by the outside world.

China's localized optimization strategy partially reflects the business resilience of the Chinese market. However, this focus and adjustment also reveal cracks in the once "arrogant" multinational giant—the rise of local forces is eroding Bosch's technological barriers.

On Chinese automakers' procurement lists, cost-effectiveness and responsiveness have become new priorities, shattering Bosch's traditional pricing power.

Amid a still-bumpy global economic recovery, Bosch Group has not been spared, with sluggish global growth directly impacting its performance.

Slower-than-expected growth in markets like electric mobility, heavy upfront investments in future technologies, and necessary strategic reserve funds have collectively squeezed Bosch's profit margins.

Faced with such predicament (Chinese term kept for context, meaning 'predicament'), Bosch Group urgently needs new breakthroughs through the Chinese market.

2. Investment-Driven 'Blood-Making Logic'

Facing the ultra-fast iteration speed of China's NEV market, Bosch has chosen not to go it alone but to build an investment-driven system alongside industrial drivers through precise annual investments of around ¥6 billion.

As the group's "technology radar," Bosch Venture Capital proactively identified hard-tech startups like Miga Robotics, UISEE, and Basic Semi conductors years ago.

Bosch Venture Capital reviews over 2,000 startups globally each year, but only about 100 make it to the shortlist, with just 6–10 ultimately receiving investment. The core principle is clear: invest only in value-driven companies with core technologies, not purely price-driven firms.

For instance, a key turning point in discovering Miga Robotics was when its robotics technology was first applied in Bosch's own home appliance production lines. This "try-before-invest" model allowed Bosch to directly verify the startup's technology deployment capabilities and product stability, strengthening its investment resolve.

BCGC, with stronger local characteristics, further upgraded this investment logic from "financial bets" to "deep incubation."

Beyond capital, Bosch China's deeper "blood-making logic" lies in abandoning the arrogance of an international giant and embedding itself deeply into China's local industrial chain ecosystem through the "Open Bosch" mechanism.

The most typical example is the 2025 joint incubation of Boyin Innovation with embodied AI unicorn Galaxy General by BCGC. This model breaks traditional CVC (Corporate Venture Capital) boundaries, with Bosch not only providing funds but also directly opening real industrial manufacturing scenarios like United Automotive Electronics for frontier technologies to complete closed-loop validation from 0 to 1 on production lines.

In fact, faced with local players like BYD, Huawei, and Horizon Robotics' grip on the supply chain, Bosch has realized that relying solely on traditional engineering barriers is no longer sufficient to compete in China's "speed-driven" market.

Recent upheavals in China's auto market have diminished Bosch's traditional component advantages.

On one hand, China's NEV market is booming, with domestic brands rising rapidly in electrification and intelligence, driving the emergence of local component suppliers. These suppliers excel in cost control, responsiveness, and collaborative development with OEMs, gradually seizing market share from foreign firms like Bosch.

Especially in core NEV components like batteries and electric drive systems, local suppliers' technologies are maturing, and product performance is improving, weakening Bosch's edge in these areas.

As early as Bosch's FY2025 annual press conference and in 2026 when responding to media queries about "layoffs," Xu Daquan clearly stated: "In emerging fields like electric motors, axles, electronic controls, and assisted driving, Bosch's profitability is not optimistic."

On the other hand, with the rapid development of intelligent driving technologies, Chinese consumers' demand for intelligence is growing. Local firms demonstrate strong innovation capabilities in intelligent driving algorithms and software, offering products better tailored to Chinese road scenarios and user needs, further challenging Bosch's leadership in traditional automotive components.

Thus, Bosch has proactively sought deep ties with local intelligent driving companies, combining their algorithmic strengths with its own mass production capabilities.

From FY2025 financial data and strategic layout (Chinese term kept for context, meaning 'layout'), Bosch China has become the group's weapon to counter global uncertainties and resist cyclical fluctuations. Data shows Bosch China's annual sales reached ¥149.8 billion, up 4.9% YoY, serving as a key engine for the group's global growth.

Especially in intelligent driving and smart cockpit businesses, Bosch has abandoned its closed, full-stack self-research model and actively sought deep ties with local tech firms. In an uncertain global market, deep localization and sustained tech investments are Bosch's confidence to navigate cycles and resist fluctuations.

3. Strategic Ambition in Embodied AI

Through a series of investment moves, Bosch has clearly demonstrated its strategic ambition in embodied AI.

This deep incubation model has enabled Boyin Innovation, a joint venture between Bosch and Galaxy General, to achieve remarkable commercialization speed within a year of its establishment.

In April 2026, Boyin Innovation signed a strategic cooperation agreement with logistics sorting system integrator Dejie Industrial, which will procure nearly 2,000 Boyin BW10 series embodied AI robots over the next three years for express logistics sorting.

On May 15, Boyin Innovation announced the completion of a nearly ¥300 million Pre-A round led by Yuanhe Chenkun, with existing shareholders like Bosch Venture Capital continuing to invest. Currently, its first self-developed industrial embodied AI robot, "BW10-Lite," has completed prototype validation, covering over 60% of manual assembly scenarios.

To accelerate tech deployment, Boyin Innovation and United Automotive Electronics jointly established the "RoboFab" embodied AI robotics lab.

(Image/BCGC official WeChat account)

Prior to this, Bosch also formed strategic partnerships with firms like Qianxun Intelligence. Unlike Boyin Innovation's "whole-machine incubation," Bosch values Qianxun's Spirit large model's cross-scenario generalization capabilities as a "universal brain."

Through this collaboration, Bosch can integrate Qianxun's technologies in spatial-temporal perception and navigation with its own strengths in robotics hardware and automation control to jointly advance embodied AI applications in more scenarios.

By jointly incubating Boyin Innovation and strategically partnering with Qianxun Intelligence, Bosch has transformed its factories into robot training grounds, directly refining products on real automotive production lines and closing the loop from algorithm models to production systems.

(Image/BCGC official WeChat account)

Of course, as a frontier technology, embodied AI still faces a severe "reality gap" in engineering deployment.

Technologically, seamlessly integrating complex VLA large models with physical robots for stable operation in high-speed, high-precision real production lines is no easy feat.

Robots' perception systems must accurately identify objects under complex lighting and occlusion, decision systems must respond to sudden conditions within milliseconds, and execution systems must efficiently complete tasks—all requiring extensive R&D and testing, posing extremely high demands on algorithmic stability and hardware reliability.

Regulatorily, although China released the "Humanoid Robots and Embodied AI Standard System (2026 Edition)" in February 2026, the industry is still in a break-in period (Chinese term kept for context, meaning 'run-in phase') for standard implementation.

The compatibility of different technical routes, the safety boundaries of human-machine collaboration, and the ethical guidelines for data privacy remain obstacles that Bosch must overcome in its large-scale promotion. Different companies are operating independently with varying technical approaches, which could lead to market confusion and impact the healthy development of the entire industry.

From being a traditional automotive parts giant to its current deep layout (layout) in cutting-edge fields such as embodied intelligence and AI-driven industrial manufacturing, every step Bosch has taken in the Chinese market is essentially an active evolution driven by the need to "survive."

Obviously, Bosch China's current investment rhythm presents a "two extremes" scenario: on one hand, it is decisively "reducing" traditional production capacities and redundant structures that lack competitiveness; on the other hand, it is "adding" investments in intelligence, local R&D, and cutting-edge hard technology sectors.

The real crisis often does not come from external competition but from internal stagnation. For this century-old industrial giant, amid the group-wide cost-reduction and efficiency-enhancement efforts, Bosch China needs to be more prudent and pragmatic. The survival of the enterprise no longer depends solely on its past scale and credentials but on its ability to continuously evolve.

In this survival trial in the Chinese market, Bosch needs to start running ahead of time.

*The featured image in the article is from the official WeChat public account of Bosch Capital; all other uncredited images are from Shetu.com, based on the VRF protocol.