Embodied AI companies need something a benchmark cannot provide: repeated evidence of how people, objects, spaces, and machines interact in ordinary settings. That is the premise behind a new partnership between OneRobotics and 58.com.
Guangzhou-based Shenhai Zhiren announced a 500 million yuan Series A financing round on August 13, according to both Pandaily and Zhidx. The company, founded in 2020, builds full-stack deep-sea robots and has been outlining a product path that mixes autonomous systems with subsea engineering tools, as described in the two reports.
SCALEFORCE has secured new financing to advance what it describes as embodied-intelligence data infrastructure, with PEdaily’s report, republished by Sina reporting that the raise totals in the tens of millions of yuan.
Chinese companies are using AI-generated micro-dramas to expand a fast-moving form of mobile entertainment into the United States market, according to Caixin Global.
Westlake Robotics has raised a nearly 100 million yuan Series A to develop a unified, whole-body large model for humanoid robots, adding a new university-derived contender to China’s fast-growing embodied AI sector.
XPeng is trying to bring a portion of robotaxi-style intelligence into ordinary consumer vehicles. The Guangzhou automaker used the unveiling of its G9L flagship SUV to preview VLA 6.3.0, a new version of its visual-language-action driving system. According to Pandaily’s report, the update adds Level 4-grade robotaxi-style features including curbside parking and campus-roam navigation.
China’s AI startup race has gained a new company with an unusually ambitious brief. Junyang Lin, a former technical leader on Alibaba’s Qwen team, has announced Pragmatik Labs, a Shanghai-based venture that says it will build agents for both digital and physical worlds.
Honor has chosen an unusually literal way to put robotics into a smartphone. The Chinese handset maker scheduled the domestic release of its Robot Phone for August 12, presenting a device that combines a conventional phone with a motorized gimbal camera and AI-assisted subject tracking.
China’s strongest position in generative AI may not be its chatbots. It may be video. A Bloomberg Opinion column republished by the Taipei Times argues that China’s lead in text-to-video systems could become strategically important because the same capabilities needed to generate coherent video can help build world models for robots and autonomous vehicles.
Typhoon Dolphin gave China’s AI weather models a high-stakes opportunity to show what they can do outside a research paper. As the storm approached China’s east coast, systems developed by Shanghai AI Laboratory, Huawei, and Fudan University operated alongside conventional forecasting tools.
A humanoid robot becomes useful only when it can move, grasp, balance, and adapt in the same environment. A research collaboration involving Peking University, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, NTU, and HKUST Guangzhou has released Omega-0, a model designed to address that whole-body coordination problem.
China’s humanoid-robot race is often measured in product launches, laboratory demonstrations, and IPO filings. Chery-backed Mojia is making a different case for scale: overseas delivery. Pandaily reported that Mojia, the humanoid and quadruped brand incubated within the Chinese automaker, has delivered more than 2,000 robots across more than 60 countries and regions.
Tesla’s effort to expand Full Self-Driving in China now faces a more demanding regulatory clock than its marketing timetable.
China’s humanoid robotics landscape is undergoing a significant power shift. Shanghai-based AgiBot has surpassed domestic heavyweight Unitree Robotics to claim the title of the world’s largest humanoid robot vendor for the first half of 2026.
China has launched a groundbreaking educational institution designed not for humans, but for machines. The Hangzhou Robot School, located in Zhejiang Province, has officially opened as the country’s first dedicated robot training facility, enrolling an inaugural class of 30 humanoid robots.
As the 100-day countdown begins for the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting, host city Shenzhen is positioning itself as a living showcase of China’s technological ambitions. When international delegates arrive in November, they will navigate a metropolis where artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced manufacturing are deeply woven into the urban fabric.
Chinese researchers and neurotechnology startups are accelerating the development of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can be implanted in a matter of minutes, bypassing the need for highly invasive brain surgery.
China’s exports of drones to emerging economies have surged this year, reflecting increased demand for farming, surveying, and other civilian applications in the Global South.
The race to take China’s leading humanoid robotics startups public is accelerating rapidly, with another major player quietly initiating the listing process. X Square Robot Technology, a highly valued startup focused on embodied artificial intelligence, has submitted a confidential filing for an initial public offering in Hong Kong.
The intense global competition to dominate the emerging field of physical artificial intelligence has collided with the messy reality of benchmark integrity. Spirit AI, a highly touted Chinese robotics startup, has been unceremoniously removed from the prestigious RoboArena leaderboard just weeks after claiming the top spot.
