He Xiaopeng breaks Unitree's record
This scene is comparable to Unitree's listing —
PE Daily has learned that XPeng Inc. has officially announced that its humanoid robot business has signed equity financing agreements with multiple investors. This round is led by IDG Capital, participated by Gaorong Ventures, and supported by two strategic investors Tencent and Alibaba.
It is worth noting that this is the first round of financing for XPeng's robot business, with a financing amount of over 900 million US dollars (about 6.5 billion RMB), and a post-money valuation of over 6.3 billion US dollars (about 43 billion RMB), which has refreshed the single-round private equity financing record of China's embodied intelligence industry in one fell swoop. In contrast, the total amount of funds raised by Unitree Robotics in its IPO is about 6.099 billion RMB.
This time, He Xiaopeng is personally in charge — he is not only the founder of XPeng Motors, but also the CEO of XPeng's robot business at present. Under his leadership, XPeng's humanoid robot business started in 2020, and it has grown into a super unicorn right after the first round of financing.
The timing is quite delicate — a few days ago, Unitree Robotics was just listed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market) as the "first humanoid robot stock". The great battle of China's embodied intelligence industry is unfolding.
Valued at 43 billion RMB, breaking the record
Alibaba and Tencent both joined in
More investment details have emerged.
According to the announcement of XPeng Inc., the pre-money valuation of Peng Xing, the transaction entity of this round, is 5 billion US dollars, and the post-money valuation is 6.3 billion US dollars. Among them, a wholly-owned subsidiary under XPeng Inc. plans to contribute 200 million US dollars to subscribe for 98.6752 million Series A preferred shares; investors including IDG Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Alibaba and Tencent plan to contribute a total of 600 million US dollars to subscribe for 296 million Series A preferred shares; the executive subscriber, an affiliated entity fully controlled by He Xiaopeng and Brian Gu, plans to contribute a total of 100 million US dollars to subscribe for 49.3376 million common shares.
For the four external investors, this round of investment in XPeng's robot business is one of the largest single investments they have disclosed in the embodied intelligence field: IDG Capital contributed 2.1 billion RMB, while Gaorong Ventures, Alibaba and Tencent contributed 720 million RMB respectively.
In addition, the announcement shows that Peng Xing can also issue Series A preferred shares to additional investors within four months from the date of signing the share purchase agreement, raising no more than 15 million US dollars.
According to the announcement, while introducing this round of capital increase, XPeng Inc. and Peng Xing will implement and complete the spin-off plan of Peng Xing within the agreed period, and transfer part of the business assets, intellectual property rights and business personnel mainly related to XPeng's robot business that have not yet been held by Peng Xing to Peng Xing.
Moreover, the capitalization timeline of XPeng's robot business has also emerged. The announcement discloses that if Peng Xing fails to complete a qualified IPO within seven years after the closing of the first batch of investment, investors have the right to require Peng Xing, its important subsidiaries or XPeng Inc. to redeem the relevant shares under certain conditions.
XPeng Inc. stated in the announcement that this round of financing can better reflect the value of Peng Xing and its robot business, attract professional robot capital different from investors in the automotive business, a large amount of funds can also reduce the financial burden of XPeng Inc., and the participation of well-known international institutional investors will also enhance the image of Peng Xing among potential customers, suppliers and strategic partners.
In the view of IDG Capital, XPeng's humanoid robot represents the leading level of China's humanoid robot industry at present, and has the strength to compete with overseas leading enterprises in the global market. XPeng has realized the full-stack self-research layout of end-side AI chips, physical AI large models and complete machine hardware, and has the industry-leading end-side computing power, training computing power and high-quality data closed-loop system. At the same time, the robot business can generate huge strategic synergy with the smart vehicle and autonomous driving business. "We believe that with the full-chain advantages from core technology R&D, mass production to globalization, XPeng will become a leading enterprise in the humanoid robot industry entering the stage of large-scale application."
Gaorong Ventures also stated that humanoid robots are moving from motion capability demonstration to stable mass production and real scene value creation. XPeng IRON enters the real commercial scene with a highly anthropomorphic product form and vehicle-grade safety quality. It is not only an interactive carrier close to humans, but also an important entrance to obtain real-world data, which is expected to promote the continuous operation of the "mass production - data - model - application" flywheel. "XPeng is systematically migrating the full-stack R&D capabilities, supply chain and manufacturing system accumulated in more than ten years of smart electric vehicles to robots, laying a solid foundation for the industrialization of humanoid robots."
After leading XPeng's humanoid robot to complete this milestone, He Xiaopeng is full of emotions. He wrote on WeChat Moments, "In the near future, we will strive to bring the first high-level humanoid robot into the real world, and it will be different from all the robots you have seen on the market."
He Xiaopeng is personally in charge
Mass-produce robots that can walk in catwalk this year
The start of XPeng's robot business is much earlier than the outside world imagines.
It is reported that He Xiaopeng's attention to robots began as early as 2016. He almost seriously investigated the robot direction every year, and once had a long talk with Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree.
It was not until 2020 that He Xiaopeng decided to take action. With the help of Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, he acquired "Dogotix" founded by Zhao Tongyang, and established "Pengxing Intelligence" to explore XPeng's robot business. Later, in September 2023, XPeng Motors acquired the remaining 74.82% of the shares of Pengxing Intelligence for 98.96 million US dollars, and Pengxing officially became the robot division of XPeng Motors; in October of the same year, XPeng's first bipedal humanoid robot PX5 made its debut.
Why is he so persistent in robot R&D? He Xiaopeng has publicly emphasized many times that the greatest value of AI is to "change the physical world". In his view, smart electric vehicles are the predecessor of robots, and autonomous driving technology solves the "cerebellum problems" such as "movement and balance", which accumulates key experience for humanoid robots.
The scene that really exploded the whole network took place at XPeng Tech Day in November 2025, when its new generation of humanoid robot IRON was officially unveiled. This model is designed according to a 1:1 real human ratio, which can realize the walking posture of catwalk, and once caused hot discussions on the Internet. Some netizens even suspected that "there is a real person hidden inside".
In terms of ontology, XPeng IRON has industry-leading anthropomorphic posture and shape, and the first full-covered flexible lattice, which takes into account both beauty and safety. There are 76 degrees of freedom in the whole body, and 21 degrees of freedom in one hand. In addition, XPeng's robot business independently designed and developed an AI-native hardware platform and all core components around embodied intelligence, including chips, controllers, motion modules and dexterous hands. Based on the complete R&D and manufacturing system of smart electric vehicles, it has created vehicle-grade quality and large-scale mass production and delivery capabilities.
In terms of intelligence, XPeng IRON is equipped with 3 Turing AI chips with an effective computing power of up to 2250 TOPS. XPeng's physical AI large model has been successfully deployed on the end side, which can independently complete complex work tasks without teleoperation, and ensure low reasoning latency and data security.
Entering 2026, the industrialization pace of XPeng's robot business has accelerated. In February, the company started the construction of the industry's first full-chain mass production base for humanoid robots; in June, He Xiaopeng announced that in addition to serving as the CEO of the group, he would also personally serve as the CEO of the robot business. He said bluntly that XPeng's humanoid robot IRON is standing at the threshold of mass production and delivery, which is equivalent to the stage 8 years ago when XPeng Motors was about to complete the release of its first car G3.
According to the plan, XPeng IRON will enter the mass production stage by the end of 2026, starting from XPeng's stores and parks to implement commercial scene applications, and will be officially launched and delivered to China and overseas markets in 2027.
It is worth noting that Peng Xing is still in the stage of continuous investment, with net losses of 87 million RMB and 369 million RMB in 2024 and 2025 respectively; as of the end of March 2026, its net liabilities are about 447 million RMB, and it has not yet disclosed large-scale product revenue and external orders.
But He Xiaopeng is still full of confidence. He said at the performance meeting that the technical threshold of high-level general-purpose robots is extremely high, and high-quality supply is quite scarce. Therefore, the revenue and gross profit contribution of each IRON in the whole life cycle, including the continuous revenue brought by hardware sales and software AI model capability upgrading, will be much higher than the average vehicle price and gross profit of the current automotive business.
Quite interestingly, He Xiaopeng also holds another super unicorn — XPeng Huitian. Also founded in 2020, XPeng Huitian focuses on the R&D of smart electric flying cars. According to He Xiaopeng's previous disclosure, the global orders of XPeng Huitian's Land Carrier have reached 7000 units so far, which is expected to set a world record for the annual sales volume of manned aircraft.
In March this year, XPeng Huitian also completed a new round of equity financing of nearly 200 million US dollars. The investment institutions include GL Ventures, HSG, Gaorong Ventures, Fortune Capital, etc. So far, the total historical equity financing of XPeng Huitian has reached about 1 billion US dollars.
According to Bloomberg reports during the period, XPeng Huitian has cooperated with JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley to prepare for its IPO. At that time, XPeng Huitian responded and emphasized that it is currently focusing on product R&D and mass production delivery, and no other information is available for sharing.
If nothing unexpected happens, He Xiaopeng will stand on the IPO bell-ringing stage again.
Automobile enterprises enter the market collectively
China's robot industry kicks off the life-and-death battle
The real knockout round kicks off.
Last week, Unitree Robotics was officially listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Sci-Tech Innovation Board, becoming the "first humanoid robot stock" in A-share market, and its market value once reached nearly 450 billion RMB on the first day of listing.
However, the stock price of Unitree began to fall the next day after listing, and its latest market value has fallen below 250 billion RMB. This "roller coaster" market has completely pierced the last layer of window paper of the embodied intelligence track: before that, startups could obtain financing by relying on technical demonstrations and conceptual solutions; after that, what the capital market wants to see is revenue, mass production and commercialization paths.
This means that the window period for humanoid robot startups is rapidly narrowing. For automotive giants, this has become the best time to enter the market collectively.
Among them, Tesla is undoubtedly the most radical player. Tao Lin, Vice President of Tesla, publicly stated that the Optimus humanoid robot will officially start large-scale mass production at the end of 2026, and the long-term planned annual production capacity of Fremont factory is 1 million units. To this end, the original Model S/X production line in the factory has been transformed into a dedicated production line for Optimus, which is planned to be officially put into production in July-August.
Let's look back at the domestic market — in February this year, GAC Group officially incubated the humanoid robot company Huilun Technology, and unveiled its fourth-generation robot GoMate Mini. Then in mid-August, Huilun Technology announced the completion of financing of over 100 million RMB, jointly invested by institutions such as CRRC Guochuang Fund, CMB International and Sichuan Sci-Tech Innovation Investment.
Such cases are emerging: at the end of March this year, Changan Automobile established Tianshu Intelligent Robotics Co., Ltd. and launched the humanoid robot prototype "Xiao'an"; Li Auto disclosed on the first-quarter earnings call that the humanoid robot product has been approved for R&D; BYD's commercial service humanoid robot "Xiao Di" was also announced at Zhengzhou "Di Space" in August this year; at the same time, Chery Automobile's Mojia Robotics spread the news of starting IPO preparation work; and at the just-concluded 2026 World Robot Conference, FAW China, Dongfeng Motor and Xiaomi Group all unveiled their new generation of humanoid robots...
Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto, once judged that "in the next 3-5 years, the competition of mid-to-high-end smart vehicles is essentially the competition of embodied intelligence. From the perspective of market pattern, no matter the car companies that have initially reached 100 billion-level revenue, or larger automobile manufacturers, they will all enter the embodied intelligence robot track."
Previously, a founder of an embodied intelligence unicorn said bluntly in an exchange with PE Daily, "Embodied companies are very worried that vehicle manufacturers will enter the market, because their technology and production lines are ready-made, which is often a dimensionality reduction blow."
The reason for this concern is self-evident. For startups, the current market pattern seems a little suffocating. The competitors they face are no longer peers on the same starting line, but automotive giants with tens of billions of cash reserves, complete supply chain systems, large-scale manufacturing capabilities and global sales networks.
After all, there is a lot of overlap between the technology systems of automobiles and robots, and this technical homology has become the innate advantage of automobile enterprises. The self-developed chips, large models, perception systems, control systems and operating systems required for smart vehicles also constitute the core technology base of general-purpose humanoid robots. The technical capabilities verified on mass-produced vehicles can be directly applied to humanoid robots.
More importantly, the industrialization capability of the automotive industry provides key support for robot mass production. The large-scale manufacturing experience, supply chain management system and quality control standards of smart vehicles can be directly applied to robot production.
In this way, vehicle manufacturers do not need to start from scratch to make robots, and the automobile factory itself is the most ideal test and landing scenario for humanoid robots.
At present, the final outcome of this knockout round is still unpredictable, but it is certain that every player on the track has no way back.