The battle between JD.com and Meituan has extended to embodied intelligence | Exclusive report from Intelligence Emergence

Author: Qiu Xiaofen

Editor: Su Jianxun

The battle between JD.com and Meituan is not limited to the food delivery sector; it has also extended to startups in the field of embodied intelligence.

After Intelligent Emergence exclusively reported in May and July 2025 that Meituan had invested in two embodied intelligence companies, Independent Variable and Stellar Map, JD.com took consecutive actions during this period. After participating in the Series B financing of ZhiYuan Robotics, JD.com recently invested in two more companies - Qianxun Intelligence and Zhongqing Robotics.

Specifically, Qianxun Intelligence completed a nearly 600 million yuan Pre-A+ round of financing. This round of financing was led by JD.com, with participation from institutions such as China Internet Investment Fund, Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology Innovation Mother Fund, Huatai Zijin, and Fosun Ruizheng.

Zhongqing Robotics also completed two rounds of financing totaling nearly 1 billion yuan recently. Among them, the Series A1 financing was also led by JD.com, with participation from Puquan Capital under CATL, Intime Group, Fortune Capital, Huakong Fund, Huangpu River Capital, etc.; the Pre-A++ round was invested by Xinghang Capital (initiated by XPeng Motors).

Both of these companies are hot players in the field of embodied intelligence, with different backgrounds and focuses in their capabilities.

Qianxun Intelligence was founded by Han Fengtao, the former CTO of Luoshi Robotics, and Gao Yang, an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University; Zhongqing Robotics was founded by Zhao Tongyang, the founder of XPeng's former robotics team, "Pengxing Intelligence".

Qianxun Intelligence's capabilities are more focused on embodied models and also involve ontology construction. Its self-developed VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model, "Spirit v1", has been recently upgraded and can perform office tasks such as desk organizing, garbage throwing, and chair returning.

In contrast, Zhongqing Robotics is more focused on ontology capabilities. By combining traditional motion control technology and reinforcement learning and integrating technical modules such as motion control, force control, planning and control, visual language navigation, and positioning, it has achieved coverage of products with different characteristics from bipedal to full humanoid robots.

Interestingly, after these two financing events, the competition between JD.com and Meituan in the investment of the embodied intelligence field has become increasingly distinct:

JD.com has invested in Qianxun Intelligence, ZhiYuan Robotics, Zhongqing Robotics, and Xianglu Technology.

Meituan has invested in Independent Variable Robotics and Stellar Map in the "embodied brain" area; in the robot ontology area, it has invested in Unitree Robotics and Galaxy Universal, and recently also invested in the star startup in the field of embodied intelligence, Tashizhihang.

JD.com's e-commerce business and its self-built logistics business are closely related to the field of embodied intelligence. However, JD.com's actions in the field of embodied intelligence are not limited to external investment.

As early as March this year, JD.com established a special department for embodied intelligence and recruited Shen Hui, the former vice president of SenseTime, to be in charge. In addition, there are multiple teams within JD.com working on R & D in cutting - edge directions.

After the team was established, JD.com has taken actions in the field of embodied intelligence recently. However, JD.com's layout strategy tends to transfer its past technological reserves to the field of embodied intelligence.

In July, JD.com also launched the "JoyInside Platform" for the robot field as a means to attract a number of robot manufacturers. This platform integrates the intelligent interaction experience accumulated by JD.com's large - scale models in scenarios such as customer service, digital humans, and shopping guides over the years.

According to the official introduction, the advantages of JD.com's JoyInside Platform lie in its ability to provide high - EQ conversation experiences, support adaptation to multiple scenarios and a large number of roles, and ensure high consistency between words and actions.

The cooperation model of this platform is to jointly build an AI brain with anthropomorphic conversation capabilities with robot hardware manufacturers to improve the human - robot interaction experience.

Currently, JD.com's JoyInside Platform has been connected to products of many robot manufacturers, such as the MagicDog Pro quadruped robot, the humanoid robot Nian NIA - FO1, the "Xuanji" egg - shaped robot, the Yuanluobo AI chess - playing robot, and Zhongqing's PM01.

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