XPeng’s robotics business has raised over $900 million at a post-money valuation of more than $6.3 billion, the Chinese EV maker announced today. XPeng calls it the largest single-round private financing in the history of China’s embodied AI industry.
The round is meant to push XPeng’s IRON humanoid robot into mass production by the end of 2026 — a timeline that keeps the automaker ahead of Tesla’s stalling Optimus program.
A record raise, and a carve-out
The financing was led by IDG Capital, with participation from Gaorong Ventures and strategic backing from Tencent and Alibaba, according to XPeng.
The company frames the round as validation of its “leadership in Physical AI” and its “ability to scale production.” Of the $900 million-plus committed, roughly $600 million comes from external investors, with about $200 million from an XPeng subsidiary and $100 million from leadership.
The raise comes alongside a corporate restructuring. XPeng is spinning its robotics assets, IP, and staff into a standalone subsidiary over the next 18 months while retaining roughly 82% ownership, which keeps the unit consolidated on the group’s financial statements but gives it a separate market valuation. CEO He Xiaopeng took direct control of the robotics business in June 2026.
What IRON actually is
XPeng unveiled the next-generation IRON at its AI Day event in November 2025, where the robot’s fluid, human-like walk was so convincing that online viewers accused the company of hiding a person in a costume. He Xiaopeng responded by cutting open the robot’s leg on stage to reveal the wiring underneath.
The hardware is genuinely ambitious. IRON carries 76 degrees of freedom across its body and 21 in each hand, wrapped in what XPeng calls a “fully enclosed flexible lattice structure” — a synthetic skin meant to balance safety and a human-like appearance.
On the compute side, IRON runs three of XPeng’s in-house Turing AI chips delivering a combined 2,250 TOPS. That lets the company run its Physical AI foundation model directly on the robot, which XPeng says allows IRON to “autonomously perform complex tasks without remote operation.”
Rival humanoid demos are frequently teleoperated by humans off-camera, and XPeng is explicitly claiming on-device autonomy — a claim that will be worth scrutinizing once IRON is in customers’ hands rather than on a stage.
The manufacturing argument
XPeng’s core pitch is that it can bring “automotive-grade quality standards and large-scale mass production” to humanoid robots by leaning on the supply chain and factories it built for EVs.
XPeng reported 103,295 vehicle deliveries in the second quarter of 2026, up 64.8% quarter-over-quarter, so the company is scaling actual hardware at volume right now. It says the robotics unit is targeting monthly capacity of more than 1,000 IRON units and has floated a goal of 1 million units by 2030.
The plan is for IRON to enter mass production by the end of 2026, starting inside XPeng’s own stores and campuses, before an official launch with deliveries in China and overseas markets in 2027.
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