XPeng Group said its humanoid robotics business has signed equity financing agreements with multiple investors, marking the unit’s first funding round. The deal is led by IDG Capital, with Gaorong Ventures participating, and backed by Tencent and Alibaba as strategic investors. The round exceeds $900 million, or about RMB 6.5 billion, and values the business at more than $6.3 billion post-money, or about RMB 43 billion, according to the report.
The figure sets a new record for a single private equity financing in China’s embodied intelligence sector. For comparison, the report said Unitree Robotics raised about RMB 6.099 billion in its IPO.
Deal terms show a $5 billion pre-money valuation
XPeng Group’s announcement said the transaction values Pengxing, the entity tied to the robotics business, at $5 billion before the financing and $6.3 billion after it.
An XPeng wholly owned subsidiary plans to invest $200 million to subscribe for 98.6752 million Series A preferred shares. Investors including IDG Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Alibaba and Tencent plan to invest a combined $600 million for 296 million Series A preferred shares. Management-related subscribers, through affiliated entities wholly controlled by He Xiaopeng and Brian Gu, plan to invest a combined $100 million for 49.3376 million ordinary shares.
For the four outside investors, the report described this as one of the largest single disclosed investments each has made in embodied intelligence. IDG Capital is investing RMB 2.1 billion. Gaorong Ventures, Alibaba and Tencent are each investing RMB 720 million, according to the report.
The announcement also said Pengxing may issue additional Series A preferred shares to other investors within four months after the share purchase agreement is signed, raising up to $15 million.
Spin-off plan and IPO-related terms were disclosed
As part of the financing, XPeng Group and Pengxing will implement and complete a spin-off plan within an agreed period. Business assets, intellectual property and personnel mainly related to XPeng’s robotics business that are not yet held by Pengxing will be transferred to Pengxing, according to the announcement.
The filing also outlined an IPO-linked protection clause. If Pengxing fails to complete a qualified IPO within seven years after the first closing, investors will have the right, under certain conditions, to require Pengxing, its key subsidiaries or XPeng Group to repurchase the relevant shares.
XPeng Group said the financing would help better reflect the value of Pengxing and the robotics business, bring in robotics-focused capital distinct from investors in the car business, ease XPeng Group’s funding burden, and improve Pengxing’s standing with potential customers, suppliers and strategic partners through the participation of well-known international institutional investors.
He Xiaopeng is personally leading the robotics business
The report said He Xiaopeng is not only the founder of XPeng Motors but also the CEO of XPeng’s robotics business. Under his leadership, XPeng’s humanoid robot effort started in 2020 and has reached super-unicorn status after its first financing round.
According to the report, He’s interest in robotics dates back to 2016. He has studied the sector almost every year and also had long conversations with Unitree founder Wang Xingxing.
In 2020, He decided to move ahead and, with the help of Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, acquired Dogotix, founded by Zhao Tongyang, before setting up Pengxing Intelligence to explore XPeng’s robotics business. In September 2023, XPeng Motors acquired the remaining 74.82% stake in Pengxing Intelligence for $98.96 million, formally turning Pengxing into XPeng Motors’ robotics division. In October that year, XPeng unveiled its first bipedal humanoid robot, PX5.
IRON is set for mass production by the end of 2026
The moment that pushed XPeng’s robotics work into wider public view came at XPeng Tech Day in November 2025, when the company introduced its new-generation humanoid robot, IRON. The model is designed at a 1:1 human scale and can walk with a catwalk-style gait, which drew broad online attention, according to the report.
On the hardware side, the report said XPeng IRON features a fully enclosed flexible lattice design intended to balance appearance and safety. The robot has 76 degrees of freedom across the body and 21 degrees of freedom in a single hand.
XPeng’s robotics business has also independently designed and developed an AI-native hardware platform and all core components for embodied intelligence, including chips, controllers, motion modules and dexterous hands. The company said it is building automotive-grade quality and large-scale delivery capability on top of its smart EV research, development and manufacturing system.
On the intelligence side, IRON is equipped with three Turing AI chips and delivers 2,250 TOPS of effective computing power. XPeng said its physical AI foundation model has been successfully deployed on-device, allowing the robot to complete complex tasks autonomously without remote operation while maintaining low inference latency and data security.
XPeng accelerated commercialization in 2026. In February, the company began construction of what it described as the industry’s first full-chain mass production base for humanoid robots. In June, He Xiaopeng said he would personally serve as CEO of the robotics business in addition to his role as group CEO. He said IRON was standing at the threshold of mass-production delivery, comparable to where XPeng Auto was eight years ago before releasing its first vehicle, the G3.
Under the current plan, XPeng IRON will enter mass production by the end of 2026, begin commercial deployment in XPeng stores and campuses, and formally launch sales and deliveries in China and overseas in 2027.
He wrote on WeChat Moments: 「In the near future, we will work hard to bring the first advanced humanoid robot into true reality. She will be unlike any robot currently seen on the market.」
The unit remains in an investment phase
Pengxing is still in a heavy-investment stage, the report said. It posted net losses of RMB 87 million in 2024 and RMB 369 million in 2025. As of the end of March 2026, it had net liabilities of about RMB 447 million. The company has not disclosed revenue from scaled products or outside orders.
Even so, He said on an earnings call that advanced general-purpose robots face very high technical barriers and that quality supply is scarce. For that reason, he said, each IRON robot could generate lifecycle revenue and gross profit from both hardware sales and ongoing software AI model upgrades that would be far higher than the current average selling price and gross profit of XPeng’s car business.
IDG Capital and Gaorong Ventures explained their investment case
IDG Capital said XPeng’s humanoid robot business represents a leading level in China’s humanoid robotics industry and has the strength to compete with overseas leaders in the global market. It said XPeng has established a full-stack in-house setup spanning on-device AI chips, physical AI large models and complete hardware, along with leading on-device compute, training compute and a high-quality data closed loop. IDG also said the robotics business could create strong strategic synergies with XPeng’s smart EV and autonomous driving operations. In its words: 「We believe XPeng, with end-to-end strengths from core technology R&D and scaled manufacturing to globalization, will become a leading company as the humanoid robotics industry moves into large-scale application.」
Gaorong Ventures said humanoid robots are moving from demonstrations of motion capability toward stable mass production and real-world value creation. It said XPeng IRON enters commercial scenarios with a highly human-like form factor and automotive-grade safety, serving both as a human-adjacent interaction interface and as a key entry point for collecting real-world data. That, it said, could keep the flywheel of 「mass production-data-model-application」 turning. Gaorong added: 「XPeng is systematically transferring the full-stack R&D capability, supply chain and manufacturing system it built over more than a decade in smart electric vehicles into robotics, laying a solid foundation for humanoid robot industrialization.」
He also holds another super-unicorn: XPeng AeroHT
The report noted that He Xiaopeng also controls another super-unicorn, XPeng AeroHT. The company was also founded in 2020 and focuses on intelligent electric flying cars.
According to He’s earlier remarks cited in the report, XPeng AeroHT’s Land Aircraft Carrier has received 7,000 orders globally and may set a world record for annual sales of piloted aircraft.
In March this year, XPeng AeroHT completed a new equity financing round of nearly $200 million, with investors including GL Ventures, Sequoia China, Gaorong Ventures and Fortune Venture Capital. Its cumulative historical equity financing has now reached about $1 billion.
Bloomberg previously reported that XPeng AeroHT was working with JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley on IPO preparations. At the time, XPeng AeroHT said it was focused on product development and mass-production delivery and had no further information to share.
Carmakers are moving into humanoid robotics as competition tightens
The report said Unitree had just listed as the first humanoid robot stock on Shanghai’s STAR Market. Last week, Unitree officially debuted on the exchange. Its market capitalization at one point approached RMB 450 billion on the first trading day.
But the stock started falling the next day, and its latest market value has slipped below RMB 250 billion, according to the report. The article argued that this shift exposed a new standard for the embodied intelligence sector: before the listing, startups could still raise money through technical demos and conceptual plans; after it, capital markets wanted revenue, mass production and a clear commercialization path.
The report also said Tesla is one of the most aggressive players in the field. Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla, said publicly that the Optimus humanoid robot will begin large-scale mass production by the end of 2026, with a long-term annual capacity target of 1 million units at the Fremont factory. Tesla has already converted the former Model S/X production line into a dedicated Optimus line and plans to start production in July or August.
In China, GAC Group incubated humanoid robot company Huilun Technology in February and showed its fourth-generation robot, GoMate Mini. In mid-August, Huilun announced a financing round of more than RMB 100 million from institutions including CRRC Guochuang Fund, CMB International and Sichuan Kechuang.
Other examples cited in the report include Changan, which set up Tianshu Intelligent Robot Company in late March and launched a humanoid prototype called Xiao’an; Li Auto, which said on its first-quarter earnings call that a humanoid robot product had been approved for R&D; BYD, which unveiled its commercial service humanoid robot Xiaodi at Zhengzhou’s Di Space in August; and Chery-backed Mojia Robot, which was said to have started IPO preparations. At the 2026 World Robot Conference, FAW, Dongfeng Motor and Xiaomi Group also presented new-generation humanoid robots.
Li Auto founder Li Xiang previously said: 「In the next three to five years, competition in mid- to high-end smart cars will in essence be competition in embodied intelligence. From a market structure perspective, whether an automaker has just reached revenue in the hundreds of billions of yuan or is even larger, it will enter the embodied intelligence robot track.」
The report also cited the founder of an embodied intelligence unicorn as saying in a conversation with PEdaily that startups are worried about automakers entering the field because the carmakers already have the technology and production lines in place.
The article said the overlap in technology stacks between automobiles and robots gives automakers a natural advantage. Self-developed chips, large models, perception systems, control systems and operating systems used in smart vehicles also form the core foundation for general-purpose humanoid robots. Manufacturing experience, supply-chain management and quality-control systems from the auto industry can also be applied directly to robot production. Auto factories themselves are seen as ideal testing and deployment environments for humanoid robots.
This story was sourced from the WeChat public account PEdaily (ID: pedaily2012) and written by Liu Bo, as cited in the report.