Leapmotor’s Zhu Jiangming: no concept-chasing, we already built our own robot

At Leapmotor’s 2026 technical launch on the evening of 16 September, founder, chairman and CEO Zhu Jiangming confirmed that Leapmotor has made a small but real investment in embodied intelligence and has built a fully self-developed robot. The firm is exploring an application scenario that can truly scale and create commercial value, and its philosophy on embodied intelligence is that technology reserves can run ahead while product delivery must be solid.

“A colleague suggested our robot should come out for a walk at the launch. I said absolutely not. A robot that can just stroll is no skill. The robot we put forward is one that can make money,” Zhu said. Like many automakers crossing into embodied intelligence, Leapmotor’s core logic is the spillover of self-developed technology. Its 11 years of full-stack in-house work, across motors, controllers, batteries, perception algorithms and compute platforms, is precisely the foundational capability robotics needs, and Leapmotor is among the best-placed carmakers to build robots.

For smart vehicles, Leapmotor has systematised innovation from vehicle architecture to electrical architecture, battery to e-drive, cockpit to assisted driving, supporting 10 models on sale with monthly sales above 100,000 and cumulative sales of 1.8m. More notably, its tech is also flowing out: it empowers partners FAW and Stellantis at the vehicle level, with electronic systems supplied to five partners, e-drive to eight and battery to ten, making technology export a second growth curve.

Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://www.gasgoo.com/apps/50640d4b55d5cba175fb84f15d679f19/robot/news/70472275-%E9%9B%B6%E8%B7%91%E6%9C%B1%E6%B1%9F%E6%98%8E-%E4%B8%8D%E7%82%92%E6%A6%82%E5%BF%B5-%E5%B7%B2%E8%87%AA%E7%A0%94%E6%9C%BA%E5%99%A8%E4%BA%BA/.