Founders with Huawei backgrounds are taking a larger share of capital flowing into China’s embodied intelligence sector this year. Citing incomplete statistics from ITjuzi, the report says 12 Huawei-linked embodied AI companies completed 24 financing rounds between Jan. 1 and Aug. 14, 2026, with total funding estimated at about 8.635 billion yuan, more than triple the full-year figure on the same basis last year.
Most of that activity came at the earliest stages. The report counts 9 angel rounds, 5 seed rounds and 5 Pre-A rounds, putting the share of early-stage financing above 80%. In practice, that means most of the companies raising money this year were new ventures founded less than two years ago, with investors placing more weight on founder pedigrees and technical track records.
Funding was concentrated in a handful of names
The 2026 funding picture was highly top-heavy. X Square Intelligence raised $455 million in a Pre-A round in April, or about 3.2 billion yuan, while Kunlunxing Robotics secured financing worth tens of billions of yuan. Together, those two companies accounted for about 70% of the total funding attributed to Huawei-linked embodied AI startups this year, leaving the rest of the field with much smaller rounds.
Several companies also moved through the market unusually fast. Ola Wanxiang, Kunlunxing Robotics and Moushen Intelligence each completed more than three financing rounds within roughly half a year. The report describes that cadence as uncommon, but says it has appeared this year as embodied intelligence financing surged and investors kept backing founder-led “star” projects, with Huawei alumni forming one of the more prominent groups.
X Square Intelligence set the record for a single round
X Square Intelligence was co-founded in July 2024 by Chen Yilun and Li Zhenyu. Chen earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University’s Department of Electronic Engineering and a PhD from the University of Michigan. He joined DJI as chief engineer in 2017, moved to Huawei in 2018, and served as CTO and chief scientist for autonomous driving systems in Huawei’s Intelligent Automotive Solution business, where he led development of Huawei’s first full-stack autonomous driving system. In mid-2022, he left Huawei’s car business and joined Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI Industry Research as chief expert in intelligent robotics.
Li, the company’s co-founder, previously served as general manager of Baidu’s intelligent driving business. The core team also includes Huawei “genius youth” recruit Ding Wenchao and other members with experience across autonomous driving, AI and robotics. The report says that mix gave the company a distinct engineering mindset shaped by automotive-grade standards.
In April 2026, the company closed a $455 million Pre-A round, described in the report as the largest single financing round ever recorded in China’s embodied intelligence industry. Investors included Hillhouse, Sequoia, Meituan, Qiming and Lanchi, along with state-backed capital such as the Beijing Robot Industry Development Investment Fund and Shanghai Guotou Xiandao.
Its technical stack centers on an in-house general embodied large model called AWE, short for All-Scenario World Embodiment. At Nvidia’s GTC conference in March 2026, Chen publicly introduced the architecture of AWE 3.0 for the first time, highlighting three key technical elements: omni-sensory decision-making from full-view perception, or OSD; high-density tactile sensing, or HTS; and latent-space smooth action, or LAS.
Based on AWE 3.0, X Square Intelligence set a Guinness World Record with 105 valid assemblies in the category described as the most sub-millimeter wire harness assemblies completed by a robot in one hour. The report says this was the first Guinness record for a Chinese embodied intelligence company in industrial precision operations. The company has also reached a partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute to jointly build a next-generation embodied intelligence large model for the global market.
Kunlunxing Robotics moved from angel to Pre-A in four months
Kunlunxing Robotics was founded by Ren Geng, who serves as CEO. According to the report, Ren’s career has included roles at Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud and Huawei, giving him operating experience in cloud infrastructure, large-model training and hardware engineering.
The company’s fundraising moved quickly in 2026. It announced an angel round on March 4, received an angel extension on May 25, and completed a Pre-A round worth tens of billions of yuan on June 23. That sequence took the company from angel financing to Pre-A in just four months.
The report presents Kunlunxing’s fundraising speed as a sign of what investors favored in embodied intelligence this year: general embodied AI built on a “body plus brain” model, with founders who can combine more than one industrial background drawing the strongest interest.
Ola Wanxiang, Knowin Intelligence and Gunao Panshi also stood out
Ola Wanxiang was founded by Zhou Shunbo, who holds a PhD in robotics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Zhou joined Huawei’s “genius youth” program in 2021 with a focus on intelligent robotics and later became what the report calls Huawei’s “employee No. 1” in embodied intelligence, building the company’s largest embodied intelligence team from scratch.
Founded in March 2026, Ola Wanxiang completed three financing rounds in two months. It raised tens of millions of yuan in a seed round in April from Hillhouse Ventures and 5Y Capital, then raised several hundred million yuan in an angel round in May led by China Merchants Venture, with SAIF Partners, Unity Ventures and BV Baidu Ventures participating. In June, it received another several hundred million yuan in angel extension financing. The report says that pace set an efficiency record for very early-stage financing in the embodied intelligence segment.
Its product strategy is described as a “progressive evolution” route. The first product uses a mobile chassis with dual robotic arms and targets makers and developers, with early users expected to help train the robot through data collection, interaction and demonstration so it can learn new skills and be deployed.
Knowin Intelligence was founded by Li Yinchuan, a post-95s entrepreneur described in the report as the youngest among Huawei-linked embodied AI startup founders. Li joined Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Lab in 2020 and over five years served as head of generative large models, the lab’s youngest project manager and chief researcher for the AIGA direction. He left in 2025 to start the company. Co-founder Wang Yunjie came from DJI, while partner Zhou Kaiwen also came out of Noah’s Ark Lab and previously served as head of Huawei’s Agent direction after entering Huawei through its “genius youth” program.
On Aug. 10, 2026, Knowin Intelligence completed a 500 million yuan angel++ round led by Matrix Partners China, with Redpoint China, SenseTime Guoxiang Capital, Walden International and the L2F Guangyuan Founder Fund joining. The post-money valuation exceeded 2 billion yuan.
The company built its own GLOW generative embodied large-model system. At this year’s WAIC, it showed its first consumer home robot product, Knowin-X1, which uses folding dual arms and a wheeled chassis. The machine can be compressed and folded, then expanded to carry out home tasks such as desktop organizing, handling and folding clothes, and operating a washing machine. According to the report, Knowin-X1 is expected to be released in 2027.
Gunao Panshi, founded by Zhu Senhua, takes a different technical path. Zhu previously conducted computer and AI research at Sun Yat-sen University, earned a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed postdoctoral research at the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. At Huawei, he served as director of the Huawei Cloud AI Algorithm Innovation Lab and was one of the interviewers for the company’s “genius youth” program. The report refers to him as Huawei’s leading figure on embodied intelligence “brains.”
The company completed a seed round worth tens of millions of yuan in January 2026 and a 100 million yuan angel round in May. While much of the current market has focused on VLA, or vision-language-action, Gunao Panshi has pursued a brain-inspired intelligence framework from the start. The report says it benchmarks against Turing Award winner Yann LeCun’s JEPA architecture and is building a Cognitive World Model. In April, a humanoid robot developed with Leju Robotics completed proof-of-concept validation in an industrial setting in Japan.
Other Huawei-linked startups also raised capital across sensing, full machines and large models
- Beta Infinite, founded and led by Liu Wulong, focuses on intelligent robotics technology. It completed a seed round worth nearly 100 million yuan in March 2026, with investors including Hongtai Fund, Jing Capital and Ginkgo Valley Capital, and then secured a seed extension worth several hundred million yuan in May.
- Moqi Intelligence said in July that it had completed more than 1 billion yuan in cumulative angel financing, including the 900 million yuan disclosed late last year. Founder Huang Qingqiu joined Huawei’s Intelligent Automotive Solution business group through the “genius youth” program in 2020 and previously led an end-to-end intelligent driving team. The company focuses on multimodal, end-to-end general embodied intelligent robot R&D.
- Moushen Intelligence completed an angel round worth tens of millions of yuan in January 2026, received an angel extension in March, closed a 300 million yuan Pre-A round in May backed by Leo Group and Gengxin Capital, and added another nearly 100 million yuan in a Pre-A extension in July. Co-founder Chen Tao previously worked at Huawei’s Singapore Central Research Institute, led development of HiSilicon’s first AI image algorithm engine known as “Wukong,” and later served as a professor at Fudan University’s Academy for Engineering and Technology and director of its Deep Learning Lab.
- Yuansheng Intelligence, founded by CEO Yang Sicheng, focuses on full embodied AI machines. Yang has technical experience at both Huawei and Tencent. The company completed a 100 million yuan Pre-A round in April 2026, with investors including Fortune Capital, Primavera Venture Partners and Yince Capital.
- Xinzhi Jushen focuses on visual-tactile sensor R&D. Its COO, Dong Daoguo, was chief architect of the first-generation Huawei Honor Magic. The company completed an angel round worth nearly 100 million yuan in May 2026.
- Zhicheng AI was founded by Hu Luhui, former chief architect and CTO of Huawei’s U.S. Research Institute, who also previously worked at Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and JD.com. Zhicheng AI completed a Pre-A round in March 2026 and an A round in June, with a focus on AI large models and general artificial intelligence robot research.
- Qiwu Technology was founded by former Huawei employee Pu Zhongzhu. The company completed a seed round in January 2026 and received angel investment from MiraclePlus in May. Neither round disclosed an amount.
Huawei career paths split into three groups, with startup focus on embodied models and full-stack machines
The report groups the Huawei-linked founders who raised money this year into three broad tiers.
The first consists of senior core technology executives, including X Square Intelligence CEO Chen Yilun, Zhicheng AI founder Hu Luhui and Kunlunxing Robotics founder Ren Geng. These founders held chief-level technical management roles at Huawei and brought strong technical credentials as well as fundraising appeal.
The second includes “genius youth” hires and lab heads such as Ola Wanxiang founder Zhou Shunbo, Moqi Intelligence founder Huang Qingqiu, Knowin Intelligence founder Li Yinchuan and Gunao Panshi founder Zhu Senhua. In the report’s framing, this group represents the transfer of some of Huawei’s more cutting-edge embodied intelligence research capacity into startups.
The third consists of former Huawei technical backbone staff, including Moushen Intelligence co-founder Chen Tao, Beta Infinite founder Liu Wulong, Yuansheng Intelligence CEO Yang Sicheng and Qiwu Technology CEO Pu Zhongzhu. Their advantage, the report says, lies in systems engineering and product engineering experience.
By startup direction, the report divides the companies into two camps. One is embodied large models or embodied “brains” integrated with full machine development, including X Square Intelligence, Kunlunxing Robotics, Knowin Intelligence, Gunao Panshi, Zhicheng AI and Qiwu Technology, some of which remain at the product-definition stage. The other focuses on robot visual perception and complete machines, including Moushen Intelligence, Beta Infinite, Ola Wanxiang, Yuansheng Intelligence and Xinzhi Jushen, with some aimed at specific technical layers or use cases and others focused on the machine itself.
The original article was published by the WeChat account ITjuzi (ID: itjuzi521) and written by Wu Meimei. Its conclusion is that, in embodied intelligence, a Huawei background has become an effective door-opener for capital, with some startups securing backing before they even had a product demo.