AGIBOT gains a stake in a domestic designer of robot control chips whose XC64AE is already in joint validation with several Chinese embodied AI companies.
Xinji Wuxian (芯际无限), a Shanghai chip designer spun out of a Tsinghua University lab, has closed a Pre-A funding round with humanoid robot maker AGIBOT (智元机器人) at the top of its investor list. The Anhui Automotive Innovation Center (安徽省汽车创新中心), Guoyuan Equity (国元股权) and Hefei Baohe Venture Capital (合肥包河创投) invested alongside AGIBOT, according to Pedaily and a ChinaVenture (投中网) report carried by Sina Tech on October 19. Wanchuang Investment Bank (万创投行) advised on the deal, Jiemian reported. The company will spend most of the money on developing and commercializing a full range of RISC-V chips for robots.
RISC-V is an open set of basic instructions that tells a processor what operations it can perform. Anyone can design a chip around it without paying license fees, which has made it a favorite of Chinese designers seeking hardware they fully control. The core team behind Xinji Wuxian began working on RISC-V chips in 2016 at the High-Performance Processor Lab of Tsinghua’s School of Integrated Circuits, ChinaVenture reported.
None of the reports disclose the size of the round. 问芯, a semiconductor account publishing on NetEase, put it at tens of millions of yuan, a figure that Pedaily and ChinaVenture did not report. Nor do the reports say how large a stake AGIBOT took.
A carmaker supplier is adding robot chips to its lineup
Xinji Wuxian earns its revenue today from cars. Its automotive-grade chips are in volume production, and its motor-control microcontrollers have passed 1 million units shipped, with 5.2 million units in new orders signed in 2026 and partnerships with JAC and Chery, according to ChinaVenture. Xinji Wuxian says its XC32MC motor-control chip for car windows, seats and lights is already fitted in vehicles, with total orders above 5 million units. A higher-safety chip, the XC32LS, is rated ASIL-D, the strictest functional-safety grade in the automotive standard, and is being tested by carmakers and their tier-one suppliers ahead of planned mass production in 2027. A central controller chip with a built-in AI processor, the XC32DC, is scheduled for production in 2028, the year the company expects its annual car-chip shipments to approach tens of millions, Pedaily reported.
The robot line is newer. The XC64AE series acts as a robot’s "cerebellum," handling motion control, and combines 12 RISC-V processor cores with an in-house neural processing unit. The first of these chips has come back from the foundry, and the series is in joint validation with several leading Chinese embodied AI companies. A second generation is due to go to manufacturing in 2027. A higher-end "brain" chip, the V1000, stacks several smaller dies side by side in a 2.5D chiplet package to reach a stated 1,000 TOPS, a measure of AI computing throughput. The company also says it builds its own software toolchain and real-time operating system.
The company was founded in 2023 and took its current name in 2026 after completing a technology transfer from Tsinghua. That year, Tsinghua’s technology-transfer company, Tsinghua University Huakong Technology Transfer (清华大学华控技术转移有限公司), took a stake in exchange for core RISC-V intellectual property, and Pedaily reported that Xinji Wuxian is the only RISC-V AI chip company in which Tsinghua holds equity through technology transfer. An August profile on OFweek said the company was previously called Xinche Wuxian (芯车无限) and named the Shuimu Tsinghua Alumni Fund (水木清华校友基金) and TusStar Ventures (启迪之星创投) as 2024 investors. Its leadership includes chief executive Cheng Baozhong (程宝忠), chief scientist He Hu (何虎), an associate professor at Tsinghua’s School of Integrated Circuits, and chief technology officer Wei Jian (韦剑), who previously worked at Qualcomm.
AGIBOT is buying influence over its own chip supply
ChinaVenture described AGIBOT’s investment as a strategic stake meant to lock in a domestically controlled computing base for its embodied AI business. It added that the Anhui center and local state-owned investors would connect the company with the region’s auto industry cluster and with customer orders. DoNews noted that humanoid robots place unusually heavy demands on real-time response, computing power and energy use. It described the company’s approach as an alternative to Tesla’s in-house chip design and Nvidia’s general-purpose platforms.
The deal fits a wider pattern. More than 20 embodied AI companies had made over 100 outside investments by September 2026, 36Kr reported, citing STAR Market Daily. AGIBOT had backed 15 early-stage companies in its own supply chain by September 2026, according to the same report. The deals 36Kr described involved actuator, sensor and data companies; a processor designer moves AGIBOT’s bets into the computing hardware inside its robots. AGIBOT is raising capital of its own while it invests, and its own reported funding round could reset its IPO clock.
Validation results will show whether the robot chips win orders
The open question is whether the XC64AE moves from joint validation to purchase orders, at AGIBOT or other robot makers. Its mass-production timing has not been disclosed, and the V1000’s 1,000 TOPS figure is a design target the company has stated, with no independent test yet. Chinese RISC-V startups are raising money in quick succession, as BlueCore’s reported funding for RISC-V server chips showed last week. The first public sign of commercial traction for Xinji Wuxian would be a robot maker naming it as the supplier of a production chip.