BEIJING, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Chinese automaker Xpeng said on Monday its robotics unit had raised more than $900 million in its \u200cfirst funding round, setting a new record for a \u200csingle private financing in China’s embodied AI sector. <\/p>\n
The funding round, led by IDG Capital \u200band backed by strategic investors Tencent and Alibaba, values the robotics business at more than $6.3 billion, Xpeng said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Gaorong Ventures, an early investor in autonomous driving company Momenta and humanoid robot startup AgiBot, \u200calso participated in the \u2060funding. <\/p>\n
The proceeds will be used to develop robotics hardware and software, train and refine physical AI models, collect \u2060high-quality data, build end-to-end mass-production facilities, and support global expansion, the company said. <\/p>\n
Xpeng has aimed to reach a monthly output of 1,000 units of \u200bits IRON \u200bhumanoid robot by the end \u200bof the year, with initial \u200cdeployments at its retail stores and industrial campuses. Commercial sales and deliveries in China and overseas markets are scheduled to begin in 2027. <\/p>\n
CEO He Xiaopeng announced in June that he would personally lead the robotics business as the electric vehicle maker, seen as one of \u200cthe leading automaker-backed developers of humanoid robots, \u200bpushes towards mass production. <\/p>\n
The robotics sector has \u200battracted growing interest from \u200bautomakers, which see parallels with intelligent vehicle development, including \u200cexpertise in sensors, software, batteries \u200band supply-chain management. <\/p>\n
In April, \u200bShanghai-based embodied AI startup TARS Robotics raised more than $455 million in a pre-A funding round, a deal that was then \u200bbilled as the largest \u200csingle private financing in China’s embodied AI sector. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Qiaoyi \u200bLi, Xiuhao Chen, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing \u200bby Susan Fenton and Mark Potter) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Chinese automaker Xpeng said on Monday its robotics unit had raised more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,1510,26412,85666,19,17,1222,82],"class_list":["post-653900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-eire","tag-funding","tag-funding-round","tag-humanoid-robot","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-robotics","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}