X Square Robot Raises $140M Amid Intensifying Embodied AI Funding Race

X Square Robot has raised approximately $140 million in a Series A++ funding round, attracting investment from ByteDance, Meituan, Alibaba, Sequoia Capital China, and several government-backed funds including the Beijing Information Industry Development Fund. This positions the startup as China's only embodied intelligence company backed by all three major tech giants simultaneously.

Founded in December 2023 by Tsinghua University and University of Southern California PhD graduate Wang Qian, the company focuses on developing foundation models for robotic systems. Its core technical contribution is the WALL-A architecture, which integrates vision-language models with physical world models. Unlike pure simulation-based approaches, X Square Robot emphasizes real-world data collection from operational robots to create what it describes as a "high-quality data feedback loop."

The company has open-sourced its end-to-end embodied foundation model called WALL-OSS, though detailed documentation or performance benchmarks aren't publicly available. In hardware development, X Square Robot has produced its "Quanta" series robots featuring fully in-house developed core components. The company claims this vertical integration has significantly reduced hardware costs, though exact pricing hasn't been disclosed.

Reported capabilities include zero-shot generalization and autonomous error correction in logistics and manufacturing environments. However, these demonstrations appear limited to controlled scenarios, with no third-party verification of performance metrics or reliability data published. The company states its robots are in early commercial deployment phases, but hasn't provided customer case studies or deployment numbers.

This funding round marks X Square Robot's third major financing event within two years, reflecting China's aggressive investment in embodied AI technologies. Government-backed entities including Shenzhen Capital Group and Nanshan Strategic Emerging Industries Investment participated alongside private capital, signaling strategic national interest in the sector.

As funding increasingly concentrates on select players—only four Chinese embodied AI companies secured major funding in 2025—the industry faces mounting pressure to transition from technical demonstrations to commercial viability. With hardware costs remaining a significant barrier and real-world environments introducing unpredictable variables, 2026 is poised to test whether current approaches can achieve sustainable product-market fit beyond controlled environments.

Source: ChinaVenture