Sept 13 — Elon Musk said in a social media reply that he is highly confident SpaceX will send Nvidia's VR NLV72 AI computer into space next year.

Hangzhou Xieyue Intelligence Technology has closed a multi-hundred-million-yuan Angel+ financing round backed by Linear Capital, Junshan Capital, Hongyi Capital and Yinshan Capital; founded in February 2026 by former Li Auto AI chief scientist Chen Wei and ex-Li Auto product line president Zhang Xiao, the firm focuses on embodied foundation models for home robots, boasting a core team with cross-domain expertise in large models, AI infrastructure, robot control, product and supply chain, and plans to advance model training, computing and data infrastructure.

At the 2026 Inclusion Bund Summit, crowds gather around Sudu Technology's booth, where a dual-arm collaborative robot continuously executes uncalibrated grasping of 12 types of heterogeneous objects with no preset trajectories, manual labeling or scene-specific retraining, leveraging its self-developed million-scale physics simulation platform that parameterizes real-world lighting, materials, friction and gravity disturbances to let the model undergo millions of virtual trials before low-cost real-world transfer through a "data-simulation-model-feedback" loop reshaping AI R&D from human instruction to machine self-learning and eventually self-driven evolution.

China accounted for more than 97% of global humanoid robot shipments of about 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, up from 5,100 a year earlier, research firm Smart Analytics Global said, as IPG Capital's Andrew Young said the country's lead rests on its manufacturing and electric-vehicle ecosystem, making it difficult for rivals to compete and smarter to build specialized applications on Chinese hardware than to replicate it.

Westlake Robotics has closed its A1 round of financing after wrapping up Series A in August, with investors including Haiyuan Capital, Cuiwei Fund, Ginkgo Valley Capital, Westlake Sci-Tech Investment and Zhongshan Venture Capital, as fresh capital backs its technical roadmap and commercial prospects; proceeds from the combined Series A financing will be used to develop its WR1 general embodied foundational model, expand multi-scenario commercial deployment of embodied intelligence and build talent pool to strengthen its integrated foundation of technology, products and talent.

UBTech inaugurated its industrial humanoid robot super smart factory in Liuzhou, Guangxi, on Sept. 12, calling it the world's first smart manufacturing benchmark plant for industrial humanoid robots with 10,000-unit-level capacity. The 14,000-square-meter factory mainly produces the Walker S series industrial humanoid robots and the Cruzr series embodied-intelligence industrial humanoid robots, and can roll out one unit every 10 minutes, with planned annual capacity of more than 10,000 units, the company said.

The Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development unveiled its 2026 Report on China’s Regional Science and Technology Innovation Evaluation at the Pujiang Innovation Forum. The report puts China’s overall score for scientific and technological innovation at 81.13, up 0.93 points year-on-year, reflecting steady improvements in the innovation ecosystem. Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Tianjin lead the nation in comprehensive innovation capacity. With a score of 91.40, Shanghai keeps its No.1 position after claiming the top spot last year.

GenRobot.AI is spearheading a new paradigm of whole-body data with the release of its Whole-Body Manipulation Data technology. The innovation enables robots to master full-body coordination, accelerating the advent of Physical AI.

The awakening of robotic intelligence may already be underway. AgiBot has released GE-Act 2.0, its upgraded world action model, featuring a 100-fold expansion of training data that enables robots to independently master new capabilities. The new iteration drastically scales the volume of training corpus, empowering robotic agents to discover and pick up new skills without manually coded instructions, marking a notable leap for embodied intelligence.

Embodied AI startup PHYMI has raised nearly $100 million in its seed round. The round is led by IDG Capital, joined by Yunqi Partners, Didi, Fosun RZ Capital, Gaorong Capital and Hesai Technology. Founded in March 2026, PHYMI is headed by Liu Nianqiu, ex-technical partner and director at DeepRoute.ai. He took part in China's high-level autonomous driving industry's key journey from L4 R&D to mass production.