Zhi Huijun is not the whole of Zhipu Robotics.

A company specializing in embodied intelligent robots, which has been established for only three years, has caused quite a stir in the A-share market.

On May 25th, Peng Zhihui, a genius teenager known as the "Wild Iron Man", officially assumed the position of Chairman of Shangwei New Materials. The company's stock soared by 18% the next day, and its market value approached 90 billion yuan. Shangwei New Materials had already skyrocketed by nearly 1,900% last year, making it the most remarkable stock in the entire A-share market for the whole year.

Zhi Yuan's development is characterized by its rapid pace. It fully took over Shangwei New Materials, and the entire operation process took less than a year. It only took three years from its establishment to reaching the top of the global humanoid robot shipment list. In contrast, the current industry benchmark, Unitree Robotics, is actually already ten years old.

The transfer of power means that the integration of Shangwei New Materials by the "Zhi Yuan Group" has come to an end, and the capital platform has been established.

What really excites the capital market is not only its extremely fast expansion speed but also the narrative logic of "veterans from Huawei + a genius teenager + a trendy industry". This Huawei gene, which is full of imagination but deliberately avoided, has propelled Shangwei New Materials, a shadow stock, directly to the threshold of the club with a market value of over 100 billion yuan.

In his Bilibili videos, Peng Zhihui is portrayed as a geek who pursues original hard technology. However, it doesn't fully represent the actual situation of this most promising robot company if we think this "model student" can represent everything about Zhi Yuan Robotics.

Genius

When Peng Zhihui was selected as one of the "Top 100 UPers on Bilibili in 2021" in 2022, he probably didn't anticipate that four years later, he would take over the leadership of an A-share listed company.

Peng Zhihui, born in 1992, is truly a "model student". His life has been like a smooth journey.

He was born in Meihua Village, Ji'an, Jiangxi. He graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China with both a bachelor's and a master's degree. During his school years, he had already shown remarkable hands-on ability and interdisciplinary talent, ranging from life sciences to IC design, from mechanical structures to embedded systems.

After graduation, Peng Zhihui joined the AI Laboratory of OPPO Research Institute as an algorithm engineer. In June 2019, Ren Zhengfei personally launched Huawei's "Genius Teenager" program. He said: "This year (2019), we will recruit 20 - 30 genius teenagers from all over the world. Next year (2020), we will recruit 200 - 300 from the global scope. These genius teenagers are like 'loaches', which can enliven our organization and activate our teams."

After seven rounds of rigorous assessments, Peng Zhihui joined Huawei in 2020 and worked in the Ascend Computing Department with an annual salary of about 2.01 million yuan, which is the highest level in the "Genius Teenager" program.

Huawei gave these "geniuses" at that time a great deal of tolerance and room for trial and error. In June 2021, due to an accident of accidentally falling off his bike on a rainy day, Peng Zhihui came up with the idea of making an intelligent self-driving bicycle. He equipped an ordinary bicycle with a lidar and achieved autonomous driving under the control of an AI algorithm.

Ren Zhengfei praised him: "The company has never given you too many restrictions. Someone is researching the autonomous driving of bicycles. Are we going to produce bicycles? No. This is a 'scalpel' he has mastered, which may play a role and generate huge commercial value in the future." It is rumored that Ren even said that he is the "source of innovation at Huawei".

What really made him famous was on social media. He has over 2.83 million followers on Bilibili (ID: Zhihui Jun), and the videos he posted include self-made game power banks, Iron Man mechanical arms, and self-driving bicycles. Since he is good at DIYing intelligent hardware, he is called the "Wild Iron Man" by netizens.

At the end of 2022, Peng Zhihui quit his enviable job and participated in the establishment of Zhi Yuan Robotics, serving as the CTO. Only half a year after its establishment, Zhi Yuan held its first press conference and presented its first-generation humanoid robot, the Expedition A1.

In August 2024, Zhi Yuan also released a total of five commercial humanoid robots in the "Expedition" and "Lingxi" series. The Lingxi X2 and Lingxi X2 - N were unveiled the following year, and at the same time, it launched the so - called world's first general embodied base large model, GO - 1. Such a new product promotion speed is quite fast.

Peng Zhihui's joining not only enhanced Zhi Yuan's hard - technology strength. The story of "a Huawei genius teenager giving up a million - yuan annual salary to start a business" has also brought huge traffic and news topics to Zhi Yuan. He was even invited to participate in a symposium with the premier.

His high education, extraordinary work experience, and the image of a "Top 100 UPer on Bilibili" with a very "human - like" touch have also brought attention and a sense of freshness to Zhi Yuan during the financing process.

Operation

Just like the Hollywood blockbuster "Everything Everywhere All at Once" created using big data, Zhi Yuan Robotics has gathered various "explosive points" that are scarce in the entrepreneurial field, and a phenomenon - level business model has been born.

The person who set up the game for Zhi Yuan is actually not Peng Zhihui but a group of "veterans from Huawei". In the eyes of the outside world, although Shu Yuanchun is not as famous as Deng Taihua and Peng Zhihui, he is the real behind - the - scenes operator of Zhi Yuan in its early days.

Shu Yuanchun had reached a rank of over 20 at Huawei and worked in the cloud intelligent computing line. In the early days of Zhi Yuan's establishment, he attracted VC and industrial capital such as Zhongke Chuangxing and BYD to invest, laying the foundation for Zhi Yuan's take - off.

Another key figure is Deng Taihua, who was once the vice - president of Huawei and the president of the computing product line. When he left, his rank had far exceeded level 24 and entered a non - display rank sequence. It is rumored that it was Deng Taihua's invitation that made Peng Zhihui decide to leave Huawei and start a business together.

With the traffic boost from Zhihui Jun, the low - key Deng Taihua rarely shows up, while Peng Zhihui, as a co - founder and CTO, attends press conferences and various interviews.

In March 2025, Deng Taihua replaced Shu Yuanchun as the legal representative. At the same time, Tencent officially announced that it would lead the Series B financing, pushing its valuation to 15 billion yuan. This is also Tencent's first investment in the embodied intelligence track.

Now, there are a large number of former senior employees at Huawei (level 23 - 24) in Zhi Yuan's management team. It's not an exaggeration to say that it has a "Huawei lineup".

Jiang Qingsong, the former head of the P&S solution product management department at Huawei and the former overseas CTO of Alibaba Cloud, serves as the president of marketing and service. Qiu Heng, the former CMO of Huawei's China enterprise business, who bought the first commercial space ticket in China at his own expense and is known as the "No. 001 commercial astronaut in China", serves as the CMO. Niu Jia is in charge of human resources.

Other data shows that Zhi Yuan's valuation exceeded 1 billion US dollars in less than half a year after its establishment, making it the fastest - rising embodied intelligence unicorn in the world. The investment institutions behind it are star - studded, including well - known VCs such as Hillhouse Capital, CDH Investments, Matrix Partners, and Sequoia Capital, large companies such as Tencent, Baidu, and JD.com, as well as industrial capital such as BYD, Sanhua, TCL, and Wolong Electric. In the latest round of financing, LG Electronics and Korea Future Asset also invested heavily.

Moreover, after the Zhi Yuan Group fully took over Shangwei New Materials, the management and the board of directors were basically replaced by veterans from Huawei. The new CEO, Tian Hua, was once the head of Huawei's Northeast European wireless solution department. The co - CEO and CTO, Zhou Bin, was once the CTO of Huawei's Ascend Computing. The financial director, Zhang Biao, once held positions such as the financial director of Huawei's wireless product line and the CFO of the Greater China region of the terminal business.

This large - scale takeover has left a huge room for imagination in the market. Although Shangwei New Materials once announced that after the completion of the equity transfer, there will be no plan for back - door listing by Zhi Yuan Innovation within the next 36 months. However, the expectation of a restructuring after 36 months is still strong.

This gives the market a reason for speculation.

Ambition

Different from Unitree Robotics founded by Wang Xingxing, and also different from the "pioneers" such as Ubtech and Leju, Zhi Yuan, full of the Huawei gene, adheres to a very unique growth mode.

The most obvious "feeling" it gives to the outside world is - fast and bold.

First of all, it has a fast iteration speed, fast mass - production speed, and fast financing speed. In its first year of establishment, it built its own robot factory in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. The next year, it released products and launched five robots. At the end of March this year, it became the first company to mass - produce 10,000 robots. It took nearly a year to increase the production from 1,000 to 5,000 units, but it only took three months to increase from 5,000 to 10,000 units, a three - fold increase in speed.

In 2025, Zhi Yuan's shipment volume reached 5,168 units, exceeding that of Unitree and becoming the humanoid robot company with the highest shipment volume in the world. It achieved in three years what Unitree took ten years to do.

In terms of revenue, the company's revenue was 300,000 yuan in its first year, more than 60 million yuan in the second year, and exceeded 1 billion yuan last year, with a 20 - fold increase every year. It may be the robot company that has achieved 1 billion yuan in revenue the fastest since its establishment, and it may also be the fastest - growing AI company.

Zhi Yuan's goal this year is to sell 20,000 - 30,000 units. If it can be achieved, it will have an income of 4 - 6 billion yuan. Deng Taihua even said that Zhi Yuan will cross the threshold of 10 billion yuan in revenue in 2027.

Compared with its peers, Zhi Yuan has an extremely fast financing frequency. It has raised funds 11 times in three years, while Galaxy Universal has raised funds 5 times in three years, and Unitree Robotics has raised funds 9 times in nine years.

On April 17th, at the APC2026 conference, Deng Taihua used "31 superlatives and 18 firsts (first, first - ever)" to describe Zhi Yuan in his speech. Peng Zhihui even boasted: "We are far ahead."

In terms of business layout, Zhi Yuan is building a huge "embodied universe" through investment, joint ventures, strategic cooperation, etc. This layout is more like planning a capital ecosystem. This approach is different from other embodied intelligent companies and is more similar to giants such as Tencent, ByteDance, or Huawei.

Zhi Yuan is not limited to a single link. Its ambition is to "do everything". The company has spun off six subsidiaries, invested in more than 60 companies, joined hands with more than 180 partners, and also launched an embodied intelligent industry fund with Hillhouse Capital.

These six subsidiaries are Zhiding Robotics, Shangwei New Materials, BotShare, Mifeng, AGILINK, and Zhiyuan Kutuofu.

Peng Zhihui compared Zhi Yuan's subsidiaries to "second - generation entrepreneurs starting businesses". The valuation of some subsidiaries exceeded 500 million yuan three months after their establishment, and the valuation inflation rate is much faster than that of the parent company, Zhi Yuan.

In particular, AGILINK became a unicorn in 139 days, and its valuation exceeded 1 billion US dollars after the Series A+ financing on May 19th. Almost at the same time, BotShare reached a valuation of 7 billion yuan in 173 days, which is incredible in the entire venture capital circle.

The founding team of Zhi Yuan basically comes from large companies such as Huawei and NIO, rather than grass - roots entrepreneurs. Peng Zhihui once admitted in an interview that Zhi Yuan is starting a business in a way of operating a large company and managing a large - scale project.

The company has a large number of people, including many founders, partners, presidents, and vice - presidents in the senior management. This has led to widespread speculation in the outside world: "How many presidents does Zhi Yuan actually have?"

This arrangement is to make full preparations for the spin - off of subsidiaries. For example, Peng Zhihui serves as the chairman of the listed platform, Shangwei New Materials; Jiang