Physical AI
Robotics & embodied AIRobotics, humanoids, embodied AI and autonomous systems — where China's AI meets the physical world.
SoftBank’s ABB Robotics Acquisition Hits China Security Review Roadblock
China has reportedly blocked SoftBank Group’s $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics business under its foreign-investment security review process. The decision complicates Masayoshi Son’s push into robotics and physical AI.
Sazhi Intelligence Raises Several Hundred Million Yuan for Six-Arm Industrial Robots
Shanghai Sazhi Intelligent Technology has closed a Pre-B round of several hundred million yuan from Jiantou Investment, Nantong Investment Management and Yunqi Partners. The company builds multi-arm industrial robots, including a six-arm model it says can run two workstations in parallel, paired with its in-house industrial world model.
JD.com Puts Computing Power First in Embodied AI, Targets 10 Million Hours of Video Data
At the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, JD.com technology committee chairman Cao Peng said physical AI is deploying at scale and that competition is moving to computing power, data and use cases rather than robot hardware. He pointed to maturing domestic compute clusters, cloud-edge-device coordination, and JD.com's plan to collect over 10 million hours of human activity video and 1 million hours of robot data within two years.
SynDexy Delivers First Batch of C1 Humanoid Robot for Precision Assembly
SynDexy says its C1 dexterous-manipulation humanoid robot has completed a first small-batch delivery, with units installed for precision assembly at consumer electronics and electronic components factories. The Beijing startup, founded in 2025, builds its robot body, visuotactile sensor and manipulation model in-house.
AgiBot Unveils GO-3 Preview, Says Robot Improved Itself in a Real Convenience Store
AgiBot used its 2026 Innovation Day to launch GO-3 Preview, an embodied foundation model it says tops the RoboDojo, RoboTwin and RoboColiseum benchmarks and will be fully open-sourced by the end of 2026. The company also reported a five-day convenience-store deployment in which a Genie G2 robot raised its full-task success rate from 28.6% to 85.7% without human demonstrations or on-site tuning.
322 Rounds, 93.4 Billion Yuan: China's Embodied AI Funding Boom Outpaces Its Engineering
China's embodied AI sector drew 93.4 billion yuan across 322 funding rounds in H1 2026, five times the year-earlier total, but nearly 59% of deals were seed-stage. Investors and founders say rising component prices and unsolved manufacturing consistency leave the commercialization gap wide open.
XPeng Wins Guangzhou Citywide Robotaxi Permit With a 279,800-Yuan SUV
XPeng has secured Guangzhou's intelligent connected vehicle demonstration operation permit, allowing its XPeng Youyou brand to carry passengers citywide under L4 rules. The fleet is built on the flagship GX starting at 279,800 yuan, a far costlier vehicle than the 100,000-150,000 yuan platforms Pony.ai and WeRide are scaling.
7 Seconds per Piece, 18 Seconds per Pair: Zhongke Huiling's A++ Round Bets on Cycle Time
2026-10-26 15:38:36 Source: Science and Technology Daily Clicks:
Driverless Delivery Leader Neolix Closes Near-$400 Million Round as Embodied AI Funding Cools
Neolix has closed a Series E of nearly $400 million co-led by Boyu Capital and a state-level AI fund, roughly double its original $200 million target and pushing total funding past 10 billion yuan. The raise lands as broader embodied-AI investment cools, with the driverless delivery market concentrating around Neolix and Zelos.
110 AgiBot Humanoids Set Guinness Dancing Record Using Mass-Production Units
AgiBot set a Guinness World Record in Jinan with 110 Yuanzheng A3 humanoids dancing in sync, all of them mass-production units that unboxed and positioned themselves on site. The company says the point is production-line consistency and fleet-scale deployment, backed by shipments it puts at more than 8,600 units in the first half.
Chery's Yaoguang 2035: 1,200 TOPS Chip, Vertical Foundation Model, 100,000 Robotaxis by 2030
At its Global Innovation Conference in Wuhu, Chery unveiled Yaoguang 2035, a decade-long strategy built on 11 technology clusters including the CheryMind vertical foundation model and in-house Ziwei chips. The automaker also detailed a factory-installed Robotaxi targeting 100,000 units by 2030, the Lingxiao eVTOL family, 1.44MW instant charging and a V2G rollout with a State Grid unit.
At CIIF 2026, JODELL Robotics Repositions From Component Supplier to Full-Stack Execution Provider
At the 2026 China International Industrial Fair, Suzhou-based JODELL Robotics announced a brand upgrade and four product lines spanning dexterous hands, tactile sensors, visuotactile modules and embodied data collection platforms. The company is repositioning from a precision component supplier to a full-stack provider of industrial embodied execution-layer capabilities.
UBTech's Thinker-WM Tops Three Embodied World Model Benchmarks
UBTech says its unified multimodal world model Thinker-WM ranked first on three embodied world model benchmarks, scoring 0.740 on WorldOlympiad, 4.66 on EWMBench and leading across 12 dimensions in WorldArena1.0 Track-1. The model routes RGB video, metric depth and robot actions into a shared latent space handled by a single Unified Dynamic Transformer.
Leju Robotics Puts 15 Humanoid Robots to Work on Zhaofeng Auto Parts Line
Leju Robotics and Zhaofeng have deployed 15 humanoid robots into routine operation on an auto parts production line in Zhejiang, handling a full prepare-pick-transfer-load workflow with a reported 98% success rate. The companies say the project generates more than 40,000 operational data records a month to feed model iteration, with the dataset donated to the OpenAtom Foundation's OpenLET community.
Embodied AI Robot Built on a Fully Domestic Electronic Architecture Debuts, With Four Proprietary Technologies Replacing Foreign Stacks Outright
A launch event for an embodied AI robot built on a domestic electronic architecture was held in Hubei recently, unveiling what its backers call the world's first embodied AI robot running a fully domestic electronic architecture.
Lingsheng Technology Raises Over 100 Million Yuan in Series A for Cross-Body Robot Architecture
Beijing-based embodied intelligence startup Lingsheng Technology said on October 8 it closed a Series A round of more than 100 million yuan, its third raise in under a year. The company is building RUDA, a unified architecture meant to let robot skills transfer across different hardware without retraining.
Chinese Vendors Ship Over 95% of World's Humanoid Robots, IDC Says
IDC says global humanoid robot shipments approached 25,000 units in the first half of 2026, up 432.1% year over year, with Chinese vendors accounting for more than 95% of the total. AGIBOT led with over 8,600 units, and IDC raised its 2030 global forecast to more than 750,000 units.
IDC: Global Humanoid Robot Shipments Near 25,000 in First Half, China Takes 78%
IDC's latest tracker puts global humanoid robot shipments at nearly 25,000 units in the first half of 2026, up 432.1% year on year, with China accounting for about 78%. The firm now expects global shipments to top 750,000 units in 2030, roughly 50% above its earlier forecast.
World's First Embodied Intelligence Robot Built on a Fully Domestic Electronic Architecture Debuts in Yichang
Work updates: releases of information including work updates from the Hubei Provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology
Simate Says Its Physical Fast-System Model Tops RoboDojo Benchmark
Physical intelligence startup Simate says the general-purpose physical fast-system model it built with its AutoResearch agent system has taken first place on the RoboDojo benchmark. The company has raised several hundred million yuan and is pursuing a 'Physical RSI' route toward recursive self-improvement in robot intelligence.
Xinhe Robotics Raises Tens of Millions of Yuan in First Round from State-Backed Investor
Xinhe Robotics (Shenzhen), a maker of explosion-proof grain-leveling robots, has raised tens of millions of yuan in its first funding round from state-owned Shenzhen Hi-Tech Investment. The proceeds will fund R&D, capacity expansion and wider deployment across Chinese grain depots, with plans to extend into ports, ship holds and a digital grain depot platform.
ORCAUBOAT closes Series C to scale marine embodied AI
Shaanxi-based ORCAUBOAT says it closed a Series C round in July 2026 led by Xi'an High-Tech Venture Capital, with Oriza Puhua and Sanyuan Capital joining, taking its 2026 fundraising to nearly 300 million yuan. The company builds embodied AI systems for vessels and surface robots, with more than 1,000 units in commercial operation across 10-plus countries.
ForgeAI Closes Tens of Millions of Yuan Angel Round to Build an Embodied AI "Brain" Reusable Across Robot Bodies
ForgeAI has closed an angel round worth tens of millions of yuan, backed by investors including TUS Star Ventures. The company has a top-tier core team, proprietary technology, a working commercial loop, and a next funding round already in motion.
Infinigence AI Open-Sources APXInf with Tsinghua and SJTU to Speed Up On-Device Deployment of Embodied Models
Infinigence AI has teamed up with Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to open-source APXInf, an on-device inference engine for embodied AI. The engine initially supports models including π0.5 and WALL-OSS, and runs on computing platforms such as the RTX 4090, Jetson Orin and Jetson Thor, covering model development, validation and deployment on the robot itself. According to the team's own tests, end-to-end inference latency for π0.5 FP8 on Jetson Thor drops from 278 milliseconds to under 26 milliseconds.
Kinetix AI Closes Angel+ Round of Over 500 Million Yuan to Speed Up Embodied AI Productization
Embodied AI startup Kinetix AI has closed an Angel+ round of more than 500 million yuan, backed by Temasek's Vertex Ventures, Fortune Capital and Wanshi Capital, with China Renaissance as exclusive financial adviser. The company will spend the money on its "data-model-hardware" iteration loop and on moving products such as the KAI Bot humanoid and KAI Hand into commercial deployment.
PHYMI Raises Nearly $100 Million in Seed Funding for Physical Agents
Embodied intelligence startup PHYMI has reportedly secured nearly $100 million in seed funding led by IDG Capital. Founded by former DeepRoute.ai technical partner Liu Nianqiu, the company is developing Physical Agents designed for complex tasks in dynamic real-world environments.
INMO Raises Nearly 1 Billion Yuan Across Series C Rounds
Chinese smart glasses maker INMO Technology has completed a Series C3 round, bringing its total Series C financing to nearly 1 billion yuan. The company plans to invest in spatial intelligence hardware, its AIOS platform and channel expansion.
From Lab to Market: Zhixing Embodied Launches Imprint X, the Industry’s First Kilohertz-Rate Vision-Tactile Sensor
On September 7, embodied intelligence company Zhixing Embodied launched its Imprint X vision-tactile sensor, overcoming conventional bottlenecks. The product has entered production-line validation at leading 3C manufacturers, and the company has reached a partnership with an undisclosed manufacturer.
Xuanji Dynamics Opens Robot SDK as It Targets European Deployment
Shenzhen-based Xuanji Dynamics presented its Hypertron-T01 quadruped robot and an open SDK at IFA 2026, aiming to support industrial deployments in Europe. The company says its robots have been validated in power-grid inspection, emergency response and industrial parks.
Ropedia Launches HOMIE Gen2 to Scale Real-World Training Data for Physical AI
Singapore-based Ropedia has launched HOMIE Gen2, a wearable multimodal capture system that records human activity for robotics, world models and embodied-AI training. The 380-gram headset combines cameras, microphones and motion sensing with software for producing synchronized, training-ready data.
Top embodied AI startup raises hundreds of millions in new funding round
A leading embodied AI “brain” company has reportedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars in a new financing round. The article says the startup is pursuing a world-model approach and attracted interest from 15 venture capital firms.
Chinese Robot Companies Crowd Into Singapore: A “Shell Game” That Is Starting to Fail
Chinese robotics companies are flocking to Singapore despite tiny local revenues, seeking global footholds, capital, partnerships, and access to chips and computing power.
Ban Chinese Robots? The U.S. Calls Them “Unsafe” While Buying Them to Take Apart and Study
The U.S. and allies are moving to restrict Chinese robotics, citing security risks while critics call the campaign protectionist and aimed at copying Chinese technology.
Are 3,000 Humanoid Robots Really “Entering Factories”? Most Are Just Mascots
Humanoid robots are entering factories in small numbers, but insiders say most remain inefficient demonstration tools rather than useful labor replacements.
A Race for Survival: 30 Robotics Companies Rush Toward IPOs as Investor Ratchets Tighten
China’s robotics sector faces a 2026 IPO rush, led by Unitree’s A-share bid, as cash-burning firms race for funding and survival.
230,000 Big Tech workers have been replaced by AI. So why are half of the companies hiring people back?
Chinese and global tech giants are cutting jobs amid AI restructuring, yet analysts predict many firms will rehire workers as automation efforts expose limits.
Caocao Mobility Rolls Out 3,600 Robotaxi Stops, Leaving 29.24 Million Ride-Hailing Drivers on Edge
Caocao Mobility’s Robotaxi expansion in Hangzhou highlights China’s autonomous ride-hailing race, intensifying pressure on nearly 30 million struggling human drivers.
Tesla’s Third-Generation Robot Has Arrived? The Internet Was Fooled by Musk’s Hype Machine
Tesla denied reports that its third-generation robot debuted at Shanghai’s AWE show, saying the display was Gen 2 amid Musk-fueled launch speculation.
Magic Atom’s Former President Wu Changzheng Leaves: Was He “Forced Out by Capital”?
Magic Atom co-founder Wu Changzheng has gradually exited leadership roles, handing control to CTO Chen Chunyu as the humanoid robot maker prepares for commercialization and a possible IPO.
Humanoid Robots Aren’t Selling. Is Renting the Only Way Out?
China’s nascent robotics market is turning to leasing and insurance as high costs, reliability concerns, rapid iteration and weak after-sales support deter outright purchases.