XPeng’s Robotics Unit Valued at $6.3B After Investment

XPeng has raised more than $900 million in its first external funding round, valuing the company’s humanoid robotics unit at more than $6.3 billion.

The funding round, made public on Monday, marks the largest single-round private funding deal recorded in China’s embodied AI industry, amid intensifying competition to commercialize the tech.

The financing gives XPeng’s robotics business a standalone valuation as the company moves to separate the unit from its core electric vehicle operations. XPeng will continue to consolidate the robotics business into its financial statements following the transaction.

The round was led by IDG Capital, with participation from Beijing venture capital firm Gaorong Ventures and strategic investment from Chinese technology giants Tencent and Alibaba.

In a release, XPeng said it will use the funding to accelerate hardware and software development, physical AI model training, data collection and the construction of mass-production facilities, as well as support the company's international expansion.

The company said it will also use the latest investment to begin mass production of its Iron humanoid robot by the end of this year, with a monthly output target of 1,000 units.

Iron was built around a full-stack approach spanning XPeng’s robot hardware, control systems and physical AI models. XPeng said the robot has 76 degrees of freedom across its body, including 21 in each hand, and uses three of the company's in-house Turing AI chips to provide up to 2,250 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of computing power.

Initial deployments are planned for XPeng stores and industrial campuses, with commercial sales and deliveries in China and overseas markets expected to begin in 2027.

The new financing will also give the robotics business more capital to expand its engineering team and develop its production capabilities as XPeng targets global markets.

The company is not alone in pursuing the automotive-to-robotics route.