Alibaba leads $100 million investment in Chinese humanoid robot startup

BEIJING — As the contention for household robots heats up, Chinese humanoid startup X Square Robot announced Monday it had secured astir $100 cardinal successful a backing circular led by Alibaba Cloud.

It's the Shenzhen-based startup's eighth circular of financing since the institution launched little than 2 years agone successful December 2023, according to Chief Operating Officer Yang Qian. She told CNBC the latest woody brings full concern successful X Square Robot to astir 2 cardinal yuan ($280 million).

HongShan, formerly Sequoia Capital China, besides participated successful the latest backing round, on with Meituan, Legend Star, Legend Capital and INCE Capital.

Venture capitalists person rushed to determination wealth into humanoid robots connected expectations that their integration with generative artificial quality volition alteration however machines interact with quality beings.

"Right present we request robots to run and implicit analyzable tasks autonomously," Yang said successful Mandarin, translated by CNBC. She pointed retired that aft decades of trying to make robots that person mostly been capable to execute constricted tasks specified arsenic grasping objects, the manufacture has realized that AI is required to alteration these machines to grow their capabilities.

X Square Robot connected Monday besides released what it calls an "open-source instauration exemplary for embodied AI," named Wall-OSS. Open root means that developers and the wide nationalist tin entree the underlying codification and usage it for free. Embodied AI refers to usage cases of the tech that are integrated with hardware, specified arsenic robots oregon self-driving vehicles.

The startup said it was the archetypal to unfastened root an AI exemplary of its benignant dedicated to robotics — and expects "robotic butlers" to go world wrong 5 years. CNBC was incapable to verify that claim.

Yang acknowledged that AI for robots inactive lags down advancements successful generative AI for chatting oregon codification generation, and said she expects tech for robots won't execute ChatGPT 3.5-type capabilities for astatine slightest 12 months. Yang besides pointed retired that "embodied AI" doesn't yet person precise wide benchmarks that tin specify comparative progress.

While the startup uses Nvidia chips for computing, different functions lone necessitate little almighty automotive chips that tin beryllium sourced domestically, Yang said.

ChatGPT 3.5 was U.S.-based OpenAI's breakthrough chatbot exemplary launched successful November 2022 that transformed concern expectations for AI's potential. Chinese companies did not make a viable rival until the merchandise of DeepSeek's R1 unfastened root exemplary earlier this year. Analysts suggest that China is connected the way to summation a planetary borderline successful AI applications, including robots.

In summation to open-source software, X Square Robot connected Monday besides launched its Quanta X2 robot, which the startup said tin connect mop heads for 360-degree cleaning, and comes with hands susceptible of perceiving subtle pressure changes successful a measurement toward much human-like functionality. The terms of the humanoid robot arsenic per probe steadfast Humanoid Guide is $80,000.

Yang said the robot institution plans to commencement preparing for an archetypal nationalist offering adjacent year, but said the startup had not yet settled connected wherever the listing would be. She said that X Square Robot was already generating gross from income to schools, hotels and status homes, and expects to turn that adjacent year.

She added that the startup was already speaking with customers successful Japan and Singapore. But for robots to truly participate the user market, their terms needs to travel down to astir $10,000 — mostly done cuts successful hardware costs — an accomplishment she expects is imaginable successful 3 to 5 years. Currently rival Unitree sells a humanoid for $16,000, though it's unclear however precocious its functions are.