Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com said at its 2026 Global Technology Explorer Conference (JDD) in Beijing that it aims to build the world’s largest embodied robot application fleet, planning to procure 3 million robots, 1 million unmanned vehicles and 100,000 drones over five years to further advance unmanned logistics. The conference was held under the theme “JoyAI: Leap into the Physical World,” the company said.
AGIBOT released its AGILE2.0 integrated perception‑control model and showcased its core achievement through a creative short film, Acrobat BOT – the Lingxi X2 robot performing high‑difficulty maneuvers including jumping through a flaming hoop. This marks a significant breakthrough in the integration of visual perception and motion control for humanoid robots.
Inclusion 2026, officially the 2026 Inclusion · Conference on the Bund, runs Sept. 9–12 in Shanghai under the theme “Building the AI Economy Together”. Hosted annually by Ant Group since 2020 with official government support, the four-day event convenes over 600 global academics, entrepreneurs and investors, alongside 300 tech exhibitors, cementing its international standing as a key AI industry summit. The event comprises a 15,000-square-metre tech exhibition, one main forum and 40 themed sessions, plus Developer Day, VC meetups and a new tech talent fair. It also debuts its first AI Art Festival, merging tech innovation with digital art creation. Top global speakers headline the conference, including Nobel laureates Thomas Sargent and Philippe Aghion, leading Chinese academicians, and executives from...
Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng Inc. said on Tuesday it has commissioned its humanoid robot production line, with the first Iron unit completing automated assembly and walking off the line autonomously as the company transitions from prototype development to manufacturing. The line, which the company claims is the world’s first automated production line for advanced humanoid robots, achieves over 80% automation in core processes and integrates automotive-grade quality control systems to support future mass production and capacity expansion. The Iron humanoid features 76 degrees of freedom across its body and 21 degrees of freedom in each hand, with a fully enclosed flexible lattice structure designed for both human-like appearance and safety. Powered by three in-house Turing AI chips delivering 2,250...
Shenzhen Xcanbot Co., Ltd., a household embodied service robot developer, has completed a tens-of-millions-yuan angel++ financing round backed by listed companies Zhejiang Jiecang Linear Motion Technology Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang YAT Electrical Appliance Co., Ltd., alongside several financial investors, marking the company’s fourth funding round in the past year and bringing together four listed industry platforms – Jiecang, YAT, Shandong Yahua, and Shenzhen Leaguer – across the robotics value chain from core components and mass manufacturing to offline deployment and frontier R&D, as the Shenzhen-based startup accelerates technology iteration, production scale-up and commercialisation.
WorldMind, a startup building AI world‑models under the Chinese brand name Huanyu Xinsheng, has closed a multi‑million‑yuan angel financing round backed by Genesis Capital, with PointStone Capital acting as the exclusive financial adviser. Founded in September 2026, the firm’s core team focuses on the intersection of embodied intelligence, AI world‑models and brain science; proceeds from the latest fundraising will be channelled into team expansion, computing infrastructure build‑out and foundational model training.
Dr. Sun Peng, former head of the agent team at Tencent Robotics X, has officially joined Astribot (Stardust Intelligence), where he will lead research, engineering and real‑world deployment for robotic reinforcement learning. A Tsinghua University PhD in Automation with more than a decade of expertise in reinforcement learning and post‑training for large models, Sun previously conducted research on deep learning and robot control at Tencent Robotics X and delivered end‑to‑end active target‑following capabilities for wheeled robots; he later moved to ByteDance AI Lab and the Seed team to contribute to projects including mathematical‑reasoning agent DeltaProver and large‑model RLHF and post‑training workflows, accumulating hands‑on experience across agent‑oriented R&D and commercial roll‑outs. Astribot, Shenzhen’s sixth embodied‑AI unicorn valued above 10 billion yuan,...
Unitree, the Chinese humanoid robot maker, released a video on Monday showing what it called the world’s first fully autonomous humanoid combat driven by a real-time world model. The company said its UnifoLM-X2-1.0 model has broken through bottlenecks in instantaneous planning, decision-making, and dynamic interactive execution, enabling high-dynamic, highly interactive real-time future prediction and planning that allows a humanoid robot to engage in fully autonomous combat. Unlike previous demonstrations that relied on preset programmes or remote control, the breakthrough enables the robot to independently predict future states and make decisions through its world model. Unitree said the achievement validates the foundational feasibility of large-scale deployment of humanoid robots driven by world models.
Samsung is accelerating development of a humanoid robot prototype with the goal of an unveiling at the CES 2027 consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The robotics project is being led by the company’s RX (Robotics eXperience) business group, which reports directly to co-CEO Roh Tae-moon, who also heads the Device eXperience (DX) division. In a rare organisational move, both the hardware development team and the AI software team within the RX group are being overseen by a single executive – Yoon Jang-hyun, president and chief technology officer of the DX division. Industry insiders said the decision to unify leadership of the robot’s “brain” (AI software) and “body” (hardware) from the earliest development stage is aimed at compressing the development...
Maniformer, a Shanghai-based physical AI data platform, won the All-Scenario Data Collection Technology Innovation Award at the Global Product Technology Innovation Awards during the IFA 2026 consumer electronics fair here, marking the first time a Chinese physical AI data infrastructure company has received recognition at the century-old exhibition. The awards, established in 2014 by International Data Group (IDG) and the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) with annual support from IFA, recognise product technology innovation and industrial application value. Other winners this year include Samsung, Sony, LG, Siemens and Dyson. Maniformer addresses what the industry sees as a critical bottleneck: as robots accelerate from labs to factories, commercial spaces and homes, scaling embodied AI models requires massive, high-quality real-world...
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