Humanoid robots aren't a brand‑new idea. Thank to Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and his Optimus robot, and those videos of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, people have been talking about them for a long time.
But behind all those conversations, there’s real progress. Humanoid robots are getting better at moving and doing things. Scientists now think that the AI used in large language models could help robots learn how to do almost any job.
This has encouraged a bunch of new companies to jump in to this area, hoping to make money from humanoid robots. A lot of the newest ones are Chinese carmakers.
For instance, earlier this week, Xpeng’s robot division raised more than $900 million in a funding round. After that, the company was valued at over $6.3 billion. The money came from IDG Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Tencent, and Alibaba. Xpeng said it was the biggest private funding round ever in China’s “embodied AI” industry – that means AI built into physical machines.
At the beginning of August, Unitree Robotics has priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 150.80 yuan per share, raising approximately 6.1 billion yuan, with offline subscriptions oversubscribed 2,760 times, as the company becomes the first humanoid robot maker listed on China’s domestic A-share market.
Furthermore, AiMOGA – the robot arm of Chery Auto – started getting ready for an IPO, according to reports, while BYD showed off a humanoid robot called Xiao Di. Other Chinese carmakers like Changan, GAC, Li Auto, SAIC, and Seres are also working on humanoid robots.
Among all of them, Xpeng is the one that watches Tesla the most closely, says Michael Dunne, who runs a consulting company called Dunne Insights.
He told TechCrunch: “Xpeng cares most about self‑driving tech, and it was the first to invest big money in humanoid robots.” He also said that Xpeng’s founder, He Xiaopeng, is a tech billionaire who is quick to change plans. “He knows car profits will be very small in the near future. Robots look much more promising.”
He Xiaopeng and Xpeng’s co‑president Brian Gu are so confident that they put their own money into the robot unit. The Wall Street Journal says they invested about $100 million in the recent funding round.
Xpeng is betting on Iron, a humanoid robot that looks very human‑like and is made for business use.
Chinese carmakers like Xpeng do have an advantage in making hardware. “They have all the parts and skills to build the robots,” Dunne said. “The question is whether they can catch up with Tesla on the AI side.”
Of course, many other companies are also making humanoid robots, like Agility Robotics, Apptronik, and Figure. They all want the same thing: to sell lots of robots for real‑world work.
Boston Dynamics, which is owned by Hyundai, is getting closer to that goal. Hyundai plans to bring its Atlas robot to its factory in Georgia this year, and by 2028, it wants to use the robots for tasks like sorting car parts. Hyundai has also teamed up with Google’s AI lab DeepMind to speed up Atlas’s development. This year, Hyundai is opening a U.S. center called the Robot Metaplant Application Center, where robots will learn how to do movements like lifting and turning.
Other auto companies are joining too. For example, Mobileye – a parts supplier – bought a humanoid robot startup called Mentee Robotics for $900 million earlier this year. Even Rivian is trying out robots through its spin‑off company Mind Robotics, but its robots probably won’t look like the humanoid ones that others are making.
Info Source:
https://techcrunch.com/
https://robotsbeat.com/
https://www.xiaopeng.com/