Is the next stop of the smart cockpit "anthropomorphic companionship"? Zhihexing has won projects from many leading automakers, and its in-vehicle robots will be successively launched on the market by the end of this year.
Zhihexing Robotics, a domestic Chinese embodied robotics startup, has shifted its business focus from the AI consumer electronics track to in-vehicle scenario implementation. It has now won bids for in-vehicle companion robot projects from multiple leading automakers including Geely and Changan. Its products will enter the mass production and delivery phase in the second half of the year, and are scheduled to be launched to the market successively by the end of 2026. At the current stage, the company is in communication with multiple intended investors for its angel round of financing, and is opening up cooperation opportunities for industrial and capital channels simultaneously.
Zhihexing is spun off from an AI consumer electronics solution team. Its core team has long served clients such as Alpha Animation, iFlytek and Haier in the past. In early 2024, Zhihexing was officially established, setting up a parallel development strategy for both AI consumer electronics and embodied robotics tracks. It focuses on developing anthropomorphic intelligent companion robots for in-vehicle scenarios, and also arranges R&D of multi-category consumer-grade embodied robots at the same time. In 2025, the team undertook the joint R&D demand of GAC's in-vehicle robot and completed the development of the prototype that meets automaker standards. In 2026, it successively won projects from many leading automakers, opening up the mass production and implementation channel for in-vehicle robots. Apart from the in-vehicle business, Zhihexing has already achieved market sales of multiple AI consumer products, and its consumer-grade bipedal robots, quadruped robots, robotic arms and dexterous hand products are all in the R&D stage.
Under the background of continuous expansion of the intelligent cockpit market, institutions including the China Passenger Car Association predict that the penetration rate of intelligent cockpits will keep rising in the next three years. Users' demands for interactive experience and emotional companionship in the in-vehicle environment are gradually released. Anthropomorphic in-vehicle robots are regarded as an important entry point for the next-generation intelligent cockpit, and the potential market size of this track exceeds 100 billion yuan. In-vehicle companion robots can also realize cross-scenario reuse, acting as an interactive carrier for car owners to remotely control vehicles in personal and home scenarios, so as to expand the application boundary of products and enhance user value.
To meet the demands of automakers in cost control, performance indicators and customized interaction, Zhihexing has built up full-chain R&D capabilities for embodied robots. Chen Huilin, the founder of the company, graduated from the Department of Electronics of Sun Yat-sen University, once worked for Nokia Siemens, Tencent and Midea, and has rich practical experience in multiple entrepreneurial projects. Its core members graduated from top universities including Tsinghua University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fudan University and Xidian University, covering key fields such as world model post-training, motor motion control, cloud service, and end-side embedded AI operating system. Different from most startup teams in the track that only focus on a single link, Zhihexing can independently complete model post-training, data processing, motion control and scenario application development, and can also participate in the customized development of core components such as motors and reducers. Its full-link self-developed system can adapt to the diversified customized demands of automakers.
In the early stage of entrepreneurship, the team once faced the problem that its R&D system, organizational structure could not match the pace of marketization. After nearly two years of adjustment, Zhihexing has completed the construction of an internal system adapted to commercial operation. The company's current business model is order-based sales of embodied robot products. Relying on the existing orders from automakers, it has formed a solid realizable revenue base, and the information of its previous financing rounds and amounts has not been publicly disclosed for the moment. At the current stage, the development priority of Zhihexing is to maintain the technical competitiveness of its products, balance the pace of R&D investment, market expansion and team expansion, control cash flow risks in the scaling process, and continuously improve the organizational operation capability.
Chen Huilin stated that as embodied intelligence technology moves from the laboratory to consumer and in-vehicle scenarios, the team hopes to realize the implementation of technology through hardware products, and also looks forward to cooperating with industrial partners and capital parties to promote the accelerated commercialization of the domestic embodied robot industry in China.