Rejected invitations from multiple automakers, Xia Zhongpu, former end-to-end head at Li Auto, joins Wujie Power | Exclusive by 36Kr

The picture shows Li Auto.

Text | Xiao Man

Editor | Li Qin, Yang Xuan

Another senior executive from Li Auto has joined the embodied intelligence industry.

36Kr Auto has exclusively learned that Xia Zhongpu, the former end-to-end head of Li Auto's intelligent driving, will join the embodied intelligence company "Boundless Dynamics".

Boundless Dynamics was founded in 2025 by Zhang Yufeng, the former vice president of Horizon. Currently, the company has completed three rounds of financing, with investors including well-known institutions such as Sequoia and Hillhouse. Boundless Dynamics focuses on building the "general brain" and "operational intelligence" of robots, and provides an embodied intelligence solution integrating hardware and software.

Xia Zhongpu left Li Auto in the middle of 2025 and has since been engaged in research on world models and reinforcement learning at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Several people familiar with the matter told 36Kr Auto that after Xia Zhongpu left Li Auto, many leading automakers extended olive branches to him, but he did not join any of them after the contacts.

With the settlement of Xia Zhongpu's new destination, all the core members of the departed intelligent driving team of Li Auto have completed the leap into the embodied intelligence industry.

In the current wave of embodied intelligence entrepreneurship, senior executives from Li Auto's intelligent driving system are receiving high attention from the capital market. Lang Xianpeng, the former president of intelligent driving at Li Auto, has obtained multiple rounds of financing after entering the embodied intelligence industry. Zhijian Dynamics, founded by Jia Peng and Wang Kai, has received 5 rounds of financing within half a year, with a cumulative financing of 2 billion RMB.

Some investors believe that teams from the automotive industry have strong AI engineering and large-scale mass production experience. Li Auto is one of the few automakers in the industry that has gone through the entire self-developed intelligent driving link from scratch, and its original intelligent driving team has the ability to "win battles".

Xia Zhongpu was a key figure in the implementation of the End-to-End architecture during his tenure at Li Auto. He joined Li Auto in 2023 and was responsible for the pre-research of next-generation intelligent driving technology. In February 2024, Xia Zhongpu was entrusted with a crucial task when Li Auto's intelligent driving was questioned both internally and externally, and he served as the end-to-end head.

Xia Zhongpu led the team to develop an end-to-end demo within less than a month and iterated it rapidly. Finally, the mass production and delivery were completed in July, taking about 100 days. This R & D achievement enabled Li Auto to make a key leap from "rule-driven" to "end-to-end large model".

Thanks to his technical output, Xia Zhongpu's position level at Li Auto was promoted from P9 (corresponding to level 19 in Li Auto's new position level system) to level 21 within two years. Such a promotion speed is rare within the company.

After leaving Li Auto, Xia Zhongpu has been engaged in world model research. He believes that this is the ultimate key to solving the generalization problems of autonomous driving and robots.

"Model the physical world using the large model method, predict the development and changes of the world through interaction with the physical world, and then influence the world to develop in a favorable direction through decision-making. If the world model reaches this level, the problems related to autonomous driving and robots can be solved." Xia Zhongpu once told 36Kr Auto.

This is highly consistent with the technical path that Boundless Dynamics is exploring. Zhang Yufeng, the founder of Boundless Dynamics, once pointed out that the core factor restricting the generalization of embodied intelligence lies in the model's in-depth understanding of physical laws.

Currently, Boundless Dynamics is building an end-to-end multimodal large model with an embedded implicit world model, aiming to achieve delicate motion generation and internalization of physical laws.

Just this month, Boundless Dynamics and Shengshu Technology, a company focusing on multimodal large models and world models, announced a comprehensive strategic cooperation. The two parties will jointly build an embodied intelligence technology base based on the multimodal generative world model. The joining of Xia Zhongpu undoubtedly injects new variables into this "physical large model" competition.

Due to the high overlap between the underlying architecture and embodied intelligence, the end-to-end and world model experience in the intelligent driving field is becoming an "accelerator" for robot evolution.

Now, Xia Zhongpu, Lang Xianpeng, Jia Peng and other intelligent driving senior executives from Li Auto have all entered the arena. Under the wave of embodied intelligence, former teammates have become opponents on the new battlefield.