_version_ 1866916005579587584
author Diao, Haiwen
Wu, Penghao
Deng, Hanming
Wang, Jiahao
Bai, Shihao
Wu, Silei
Fan, Weichen
Ye, Wenjie
Tong, Wenwen
Fan, Xiangyu
Li, Yan
Wang, Yubo
Cao, Zhijie
Lin, Zhiqian
Yang, Zhitao
Cai, Zhongang
Niu, Yuwei
Zhu, Yue
Liu, Bo
Lv, Chengguang
Yu, Haojia
Xie, Haozhe
Wang, Hongli
Fan, Jianan
Li, Jiaqi
Lu, Jiefan
Ni, Jingcheng
Xu, Junxiang
Liang, Kaihuan
Shi, Lianqiang
Dai, Linjun
Wang, Linyan
Qian, Oscar
Gao, Peng
Liu, Pengfei
Sun, Qingping
Shen, Rui
Wang, Ruisi
Ma, Shengnan
Yang, Shuang
Xie, Siyi
Li, Siying
Zhong, Tianbo
Kong, Xiangli
Shi, Xuanke
Gao, Yang
Yao, Yongqiang
Wang, Yves
Bai, Zhengqi
Lin, Zhengyu
Yin, Zixin
Sun, Wenxiu
Gong, Ruihao
Wang, Quan
Lu, Lewei
Yang, Lei
Liu, Ziwei
Lin, Dahua
author_facet Diao, Haiwen
Wu, Penghao
Deng, Hanming
Wang, Jiahao
Bai, Shihao
Wu, Silei
Fan, Weichen
Ye, Wenjie
Tong, Wenwen
Fan, Xiangyu
Li, Yan
Wang, Yubo
Cao, Zhijie
Lin, Zhiqian
Yang, Zhitao
Cai, Zhongang
Niu, Yuwei
Zhu, Yue
Liu, Bo
Lv, Chengguang
Yu, Haojia
Xie, Haozhe
Wang, Hongli
Fan, Jianan
Li, Jiaqi
Lu, Jiefan
Ni, Jingcheng
Xu, Junxiang
Liang, Kaihuan
Shi, Lianqiang
Dai, Linjun
Wang, Linyan
Qian, Oscar
Gao, Peng
Liu, Pengfei
Sun, Qingping
Shen, Rui
Wang, Ruisi
Ma, Shengnan
Yang, Shuang
Xie, Siyi
Li, Siying
Zhong, Tianbo
Kong, Xiangli
Shi, Xuanke
Gao, Yang
Yao, Yongqiang
Wang, Yves
Bai, Zhengqi
Lin, Zhengyu
Yin, Zixin
Sun, Wenxiu
Gong, Ruihao
Wang, Quan
Lu, Lewei
Yang, Lei
Liu, Ziwei
Lin, Dahua
contents Recent large vision-language models (VLMs) remain fundamentally constrained by a persistent dichotomy: understanding and generation are treated as distinct problems, leading to fragmented architectures, cascaded pipelines, and misaligned representation spaces. We argue that this divide is not merely an engineering artifact, but a structural limitation that hinders the emergence of native multimodal intelligence. Hence, we introduce SenseNova-U1, a native unified multimodal paradigm built upon NEO-unify, in which understanding and generation evolve as synergistic views of a single underlying process. We launch two native unified variants, SenseNova-U1-8B-MoT and SenseNova-U1-A3B-MoT, built on dense (8B) and mixture-of-experts (30B-A3B) understanding baselines, respectively. Designed from first principles, they rival top-tier understanding-only VLMs across text understanding, vision-language perception, knowledge reasoning, agentic decision-making, and spatial intelligence. Meanwhile, they deliver strong semantic consistency and visual fidelity, excelling in conventional or knowledge-intensive any-to-image (X2I) synthesis, complex text-rich infographic generation, and interleaved vision-language generation, with or without think patterns. Beyond performance, we show detailed model design, data preprocessing, pre-/post-training, and inference strategies to support community research. Last but not least, preliminary evidence demonstrates that our models extend beyond perception and generation, performing strongly in vision-language-action (VLA) and world model (WM) scenarios. This points toward a broader roadmap where models do not translate between modalities, but think and act across them in a native manner. Multimodal AI is no longer about connecting separate systems, but about building a unified one and trusting the necessary capabilities to emerge from within.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_12500
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SenseNova-U1: Unifying Multimodal Understanding and Generation with NEO-unify Architecture
Diao, Haiwen
Wu, Penghao
Deng, Hanming
Wang, Jiahao
Bai, Shihao
Wu, Silei
Fan, Weichen
Ye, Wenjie
Tong, Wenwen
Fan, Xiangyu
Li, Yan
Wang, Yubo
Cao, Zhijie
Lin, Zhiqian
Yang, Zhitao
Cai, Zhongang
Niu, Yuwei
Zhu, Yue
Liu, Bo
Lv, Chengguang
Yu, Haojia
Xie, Haozhe
Wang, Hongli
Fan, Jianan
Li, Jiaqi
Lu, Jiefan
Ni, Jingcheng
Xu, Junxiang
Liang, Kaihuan
Shi, Lianqiang
Dai, Linjun
Wang, Linyan
Qian, Oscar
Gao, Peng
Liu, Pengfei
Sun, Qingping
Shen, Rui
Wang, Ruisi
Ma, Shengnan
Yang, Shuang
Xie, Siyi
Li, Siying
Zhong, Tianbo
Kong, Xiangli
Shi, Xuanke
Gao, Yang
Yao, Yongqiang
Wang, Yves
Bai, Zhengqi
Lin, Zhengyu
Yin, Zixin
Sun, Wenxiu
Gong, Ruihao
Wang, Quan
Lu, Lewei
Yang, Lei
Liu, Ziwei
Lin, Dahua
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Recent large vision-language models (VLMs) remain fundamentally constrained by a persistent dichotomy: understanding and generation are treated as distinct problems, leading to fragmented architectures, cascaded pipelines, and misaligned representation spaces. We argue that this divide is not merely an engineering artifact, but a structural limitation that hinders the emergence of native multimodal intelligence. Hence, we introduce SenseNova-U1, a native unified multimodal paradigm built upon NEO-unify, in which understanding and generation evolve as synergistic views of a single underlying process. We launch two native unified variants, SenseNova-U1-8B-MoT and SenseNova-U1-A3B-MoT, built on dense (8B) and mixture-of-experts (30B-A3B) understanding baselines, respectively. Designed from first principles, they rival top-tier understanding-only VLMs across text understanding, vision-language perception, knowledge reasoning, agentic decision-making, and spatial intelligence. Meanwhile, they deliver strong semantic consistency and visual fidelity, excelling in conventional or knowledge-intensive any-to-image (X2I) synthesis, complex text-rich infographic generation, and interleaved vision-language generation, with or without think patterns. Beyond performance, we show detailed model design, data preprocessing, pre-/post-training, and inference strategies to support community research. Last but not least, preliminary evidence demonstrates that our models extend beyond perception and generation, performing strongly in vision-language-action (VLA) and world model (WM) scenarios. This points toward a broader roadmap where models do not translate between modalities, but think and act across them in a native manner. Multimodal AI is no longer about connecting separate systems, but about building a unified one and trusting the necessary capabilities to emerge from within.
title SenseNova-U1: Unifying Multimodal Understanding and Generation with NEO-unify Architecture
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12500