Xpeng Motors' robotics unit raises over $900 million in first funding round, leading scaled production and application of physical AI

Today, Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV; HKEX: 9868), a global leader in physical AI, announced that its humanoid robotics business has signed equity financing agreements with multiple investors. This marks the robotics unit's first funding round, raising over $900 million at a post-money valuation exceeding $6.3 billion — a new record for a single private equity round in China's Embodied Artificial Intelligence sector.

The round was initiated proactively by top-tier global investors: led by IDG Capital, with participation from Gaorong Ventures, and strategic backing from both Tencent and Alibaba. The syndicate brings together leading investment firms and strategic investors with deep global footprints in Embodied Artificial Intelligence. That the first round broke industry records for both size and valuation reflects the capital markets' strong confidence in Xpeng Motors' leadership in physical AI, its technical approach, mass-production capabilities, and long-term commercial value — while also bringing additional strategic resources for ecosystem building and application expansion.

As a key vehicle for Xpeng Motors' physical AI strategy, Xpeng IRON is positioned as a highly humanoid, AI-driven, advanced general-purpose humanoid robot built to the highest safety standards, with the goal of becoming the next-generation general-purpose humanoid platform supporting broad scenario applications and real-world self-improvement. To this end, the robotics business has built a full-stack self-developed technology system with deep hardware-software integration, covering the complete robot stack: body, brain, cerebellum, data, and infrastructure.

On the hardware side, Xpeng IRON features the industry's most human-like proportions and design, pioneering a fully enclosed flexible lattice structure that balances aesthetics and safety. Its 76 degrees of freedom across the body and 21 in a single hand both lead the industry. The robotics team independently designed an AI-native hardware platform and all core components — including chips, controllers, motion modules, and dexterous hands — leveraging Xpeng's mature smart EV R&D and manufacturing systems to deliver automotive-grade quality and large-scale mass production.

On the intelligence side, Xpeng IRON carries three Turing AI chips with effective compute of 2,250 TOPS. With this industry-leading compute, Xpeng's physical AI foundation model deploys successfully at the edge, enabling autonomous completion of complex tasks without teleoperation while ensuring low inference latency and data security. The highly humanoid hardware platform is inherently better positioned for data scaling — maximizing reuse of behavioral data from human daily life while rapidly adapting to the wide range of human-centric application scenarios.

As Xpeng IRON moves into production and deployment, the company will gain massive amounts of real-world scenario data and human demonstration data, accelerating AI model training and iteration. Improved model capabilities will in turn enable the robot to enter more scenarios and generate higher-quality data, creating a "data-model-application" flywheel that drives rapid evolution of Xpeng IRON in the real world.

Through this round, the robotics business gains a clear market-based valuation and diversified capital support for sustained investment in full-stack physical AI self-development, while also strengthening long-term incentive mechanisms for executives and core talent. Following closing, Xpeng Motors will retain majority control of the robotics business, which will continue to be consolidated into the group's financial statements. Drawing on its long-term accumulation in physical-world foundation models, Turing AI chips, and AI infrastructure, as well as core capabilities in automotive-grade R&D systems, supply chain, and globalization, Xpeng Motors maintains deep strategic synergy with its humanoid robotics business — leading the global application and commercialization of advanced general-purpose humanoid robots.

Proceeds will primarily fund R&D for hardware and software, physical AI model training and iteration, high-quality data collection, full-chain mass production base construction, and global commercial expansion. Xpeng IRON is planned to enter production by end of 2026, with initial commercial deployment starting at Xpeng's own stores and campuses, followed by official launch and delivery in China and overseas markets in 2027.

He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, said: "Over the past 12 years, Xpeng Motors has consistently pursued full-stack self-development, building a solid technical foundation for the physical AI era — including physical-world foundation models, Turing AI chips, and AI infrastructure. It is precisely because of this committed investment and accumulation that Xpeng is able to pioneer a new phase of mass production and commercialization for advanced general-purpose humanoid robots. In my view, this round brings in long-term capital from internationally renowned investment institutions and strategic investors, providing abundant resources to support the rapid development and continued leadership of Xpeng's robotics business, and will attract more top physical AI talent to join Xpeng. Xpeng IRON combines highly humanoid design, the smartest AI brain, and the highest safety standards. I hope Xpeng IRON will become a trustworthy companion for humanity, truly entering people's work and daily lives."

Gaorong Ventures commented: "Humanoid robots are transitioning from demonstrations of athletic capability toward stable mass production and real-world value creation. Xpeng IRON enters real commercial scenarios with a highly humanoid product form and automotive-grade safety — serving both as an interaction medium close to humans and as a critical entry point for acquiring real-world data, with the potential to drive continuous operation of a 'mass production-data-model-application' flywheel. Xpeng is systematically transferring more than a decade of full-stack R&D capabilities, supply chain, and manufacturing systems from smart electric vehicles to robotics, laying a solid foundation for the industrialization of humanoid robots. Gaorong has long been confident in the Xpeng team's product definition capabilities and engineering execution, and looks forward to working with Xpeng to bring China's physical AI innovations to global markets."