BAGEL

BAGEL is an open unified multimodal model that aims to place understanding and generation inside one model framework. It sits in the shift from point capabilities toward general vision-language systems.

The public repository provides code and model entry points for researchers and developers.

Unified multimodal models are one of the main competitive lines in 2025-2026. BAGEL focuses on how one model can handle visual understanding, text, and generation rather than splitting tasks across separate models.

It forms an interesting contrast with university lines such as Show-o and NExT-GPT: corporate labs tend to emphasize productization and rapid iteration.

ByteDance Seed’s presence in Singapore connects the local ecosystem to Chinese and global model-research networks. Projects such as BAGEL show that Singapore is not only a regional HQ location, but can be part of frontier-model teams.

The points to track: Singapore teams’ actual role in training, data, evaluation, or product; and whether these open projects attract local developers.