Sam Li Inspects Guangdong, Independent Variable Robotics Represents Embodied Artificial Intelligence Industry at Symposium | Unity Ventures Portfolio
Qian Wang, founder of Ziliangliang (自变量), briefed Sam Li on his reflections regarding the Embodied Artificial Intelligence industry's development and the company's forward-looking explorations.
On January 4, Sam Li, member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council, conducted research in Guangdong. In Shenzhen, Li held a symposium with the founders of three representative tech companies and relevant officials from the Shenzhen municipal government. Qian Wang, founder and CEO of Unity Ventures portfolio company Independent Variable Robotics, attended and briefed Premier Li on his thinking about the embodied AI industry and Independent Variable's forward-looking explorations.
Xinwen Lianbo reported that on January 4, Sam Li, member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council, conducted research in Guangdong. In Shenzhen, Li emphasized that technological innovation is the key to winning the future. He called for strengthening enterprises' principal role in innovation, improving policy, funding, and talent support, leveraging the advantages of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to gather innovation resources, targeting emerging fields and core technologies for strengthened R&D collaboration, and achieving more breakthrough results.
Li visited Shenzhen Robot Valley, where he watched "Quantum 1," a general-purpose robot developed by Unity Ventures portfolio company Independent Variable, autonomously complete a long-sequence complex task — making a sachet — based on its self-developed embodied AI foundation model. He also interacted with the robot and expressed affirmation and encouragement afterward.
During the research trip, Li held a symposium with the founders of three representative tech companies and relevant officials from the Shenzhen municipal government. Qian Wang, founder and CEO of Independent Variable Robotics, attended and briefed Premier Li on his thinking about the embodied AI industry and Independent Variable's forward-looking explorations.
Qian Wang, founder and CEO of Independent Variable Robotics, stated: "The historical inflection point for embodied AI has arrived, and 2026 will be the first year of qualitative transformation. On the most critical technological paradigm, the industry has begun to converge on a consensus judgment: embodied AI foundation models are not simply AI applications, but are gradually forming another foundation model for the physical world, parallel to the virtual-world foundation models represented by large language models.
Under this judgment, the world is accelerating investment across data, models, and computing power to rapidly advance embodied AI development. Meanwhile, application scenarios are progressing from simple emotional value to human-machine collaboration and fully autonomous practical value realization.
Most importantly, embodied AI represents the first opportunity since the Industrial Revolution to potentially free the entire industrial chain from human manual labor, enabling the possibility of fully autonomous machines producing machines, thereby triggering exponential transformation in all material production. Fully autonomous robots are no longer science fiction, but the most critical variable in fundamentally reshaping future productivity and production relations — new-quality productive forces, and a strategic high ground for national development of new-quality productive forces in the future."
Since its founding two years ago, Independent Variable has consistently adhered to self-developing native physical-world foundation models, building AI-native hardware-software integrated solutions that actually serve genuinely useful commercial and life scenarios. Based on its directional conviction in general-purpose models, end-to-end solutions, and data-centric training methods, combined with its tremendous commitment of resources in computing power, data, and talent, the company successfully anticipated technological development trends and trained the globally leading embodied AI foundation model Great Wall series.
On commercialization, Independent Variable prioritizes useful scenarios, giving precedence to robots' practical value. It has already approached the inflection point from quantitative to qualitative transformation in multiple fields including elder care and industry. On ecosystem, it empowers hardware design with AI capabilities, having driven and helped industry chain partners achieve rapid development from zero to world-leading, while fully supporting open-source model ecosystems. The company's released open-source models have achieved leading results in internationally authoritative public benchmarks, helping academia and industry peers expand numerous downstream applications.
Independent Variable hopes to leverage the industrial cluster advantages of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area by closing the loop across technology, industry, and ecosystem, enabling shared acceleration and progress across the entire industry."
Unity Ventures was an early investor in Independent Variable, making consecutive bets in the angel+ and Pre-A rounds. Embodied AI and humanoid robots are undergoing tremendous transformation, with the potential to become both the starting point for productivity explosion and a track where China can achieve world-leading position from scratch. Independent Variable Robotics is positioned to continue leading the holistic development of embodied AI in this revolution, working with upstream and downstream ecosystem partners to unleash technological value in real scenarios, continuously empower industries across the board, and jointly create an efficient, intelligent technological future.
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