Multiple Companies Advance Commercialization of Embodied AI and Autonomous Driving; AgileX Ships 10,000 Robots, Xinghaitu Raises $2.8B

On April 2, the YOYO Technology Fully Automated Industrial Base Project for Robotic Joints was signed in Xishan District, Wuxi. Covering an area of 34 mu (approximately 22,667 square meters) with a total investment of RMB 1 billion, the project will construct an automated production facility exceeding 40,000 square meters, deploy 30 automated production lines, and achieve an annual output of 3 million integrated joint modules, generating an estimated annual revenue of RMB 1.5 billion. Founded in 2018, YOYO Technology specializes in the R&D and manufacturing of integrated servo joint modules that combine motors, reducers, drivers, and encoders. Its products have been applied in humanoid robots, collaborative robotic arms, and industrial automation, and the company has become a core supplier to enterprises such as Agibot. Its products are exported to Europe, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. By 2025, YOYO had cumulatively delivered 95,000 joint modules. In January 2024, it launched the world’s first fully automated production line for robotic joints, achieving a first-pass yield rate exceeding 95%. On the same day, BASF and Qitian Robotics signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Shanghai to collaborate in areas including intelligent inspection in the chemical industry and innovative materials for robotics. BASF will provide technical support in engineering plastics and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) to enable lightweight design for quadrupedal and humanoid robots, while Qitian Robotics will promote its intelligent inspection solutions across BASF’s global facilities. Recently, Xinghaitu completed a Series B+ financing round of nearly RMB 2 billion—just months after raising nearly RMB 1 billion in its Series B round in February. The latest round was jointly participated by industrial capital firms including Walden International, Lens Technology, Silicon Core Investment, Times Partner, and AECC Fund; long-term investment funds such as Xiuyuan Capital and Hongzhang Capital; national strategic investors like Financial Street Capital and Jinpu Investment; and top-tier private equity firms including CICC Capital, PuHua Capital, and Hongtai Fund. Proceeds will be used for foundational model R&D, global ecosystem expansion, and the development of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) and world models driven by real-world data. Xinghaitu has launched products including the R1 Pro, R1 Lite, and the dexterous hand DEXO, establishing a complete system spanning core components, full-body platforms, and development tools. Through its self-developed EDP development platform, the company has achieved a closed-loop workflow from data collection and annotation to model deployment. It has already secured thousand-unit-level orders across five key scenarios: material handling, grasping, packaging, fabric manipulation, and equipment integration, and plans to reach ten-thousand-unit mass production by 2026. On March 30, Apollo Go (Luobo Kuaipao) officially launched commercial fully driverless operations in Dubai, with the public able to access the service via the Apollo Go app. Under the guidance of Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), Apollo Go became the city’s first and only self-operated platform offering fully autonomous mobility services and has deployed the largest-scale autonomous fleet in the region. Its operational strategy features two prongs: an exclusive agreement with Dubai’s state-owned taxi company DTC and integration into the Uber app for ride hailing. Since announcing its plan in 2025 to deploy over 1,000 autonomous vehicles, Apollo Go has obtained Dubai’s “No. 001” testing license and the emirate’s first fully driverless testing permit, and has activated its first overseas operations base. To date, Apollo Go has expanded to 26 cities globally and completed over 20 million rides. Also on March 30, Agibot rolled out its 10,000th general-purpose embodied robot. This includes 2,126 units from the Yuanzheng series (A1/A2/A3), 5,008 from the Lingxi series (X1/X2), and 2,909 from the Jingling series (G1/G2). From January 6 to December 8, 2025, Agibot scaled production from 1,000 to 5,000 units; from December 8, 2025, to March 28, 2026, it produced an additional 5,000 units. The company has established a standardized supply chain and possesses flexible delivery capacity exceeding 100,000 units annually, supported by pilot production facilities, mass-production factories, and dedicated automated lines for joint modules. Agibot aims to deliver its 100,000th robot by the end of 2027. Its products are already deployed in real-world settings such as Longcheer Technology and Joyson Electronics factories, as well as Singapore’s Changi Airport, and have entered 10 overseas markets including Malaysia, Thailand, and Australia. Concurrently, Agibot has open-sourced key resources—including its robot operating system AimRT, Lingxi X1 schematics and code, and a million-scale real-robot dataset—to accelerate ecosystem development.