The Belt 
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 … Read more
Agility’s Digit 5 removes the safety cage and takes USD 300 million of orders Agility Robotics has released the Digit 5, and the claim it makes is a specific one. The company says it is the first humanoid robot able to work closely alongside people without a physical safety fence. A Digit humanoid at work … Read more
Wall Street is repricing Tesla Semi as a software terminal, not a truck Can a smart heavy lorry keep earning after it has been sold? Morgan Stanley thinks so, and the arithmetic it published alongside Tesla’s European Semi launch is far larger than the hardware it sits on. Tesla’s European-specification Semi was unveiled on 11 … Read more
NIO’s Qin Lihong: the range-extender dividend is fading, pure electric will soon pass 50 per cent In the first half of 2026 China’s car market advanced through pressure and change at once. Domestic passenger-vehicle registrations fell about 20 per cent year on year even as nearly 500 new models launched. The mismatch compressed the hot-selling … Read more
Xspark AI’s Ding Wenbo: touch cannot replace vision, but robots need their own ‘spinal cord’ Embodied intelligence has entered its “tactile era,” and Ding Wenbo proposes a “spinal cord” architecture to fix the physical-interaction gap in robots. Ding is hard to pin down with one word: communications PhD, materials postdoc, machine-tactility scholar. In 2025 he … Read more
Jijia Vision’s joint-stock revamp puts a ‘world model’ IPO on the near horizon Gasgoo’s Embodied Intelligence desk reports that Beijing Jijia Vision Technology has completed its joint-stock restructuring, changing its name to Beijing Jijia Vision Technology Co., Ltd and converting from a limited liability company to a joint-stock company. The commercial-registration change has been publicised. … Read more
Turi AI closes first funding round to build its embodied-robotics ODM stack Gasgoo’s Embodied Intelligence desk reports that Hangzhou Turi Intelligent Equipment (Turi AI) has closed its first round of financing in the tens of millions of yuan. The round was led by Dongli Future Tech and Tongli Tech, joined by industrial investors Huang Yuexian … Read more
From Xiaolingtong to hotel robots: a UTStarcom old guard takes Wuxi firm past HK$15.5bn On 9 September, Youdao Robotics surged as much as 176 per cent on its first trading day, with its market value briefly crossing HK$15.5bn. History had not vanished. It merely returned in a new posture, as a founding team that grew … Read more
LuoHu launches an AI committee to wire its tech firms into one ecosystem On 15 September, the LuoHu District Federation of Industry and Commerce (General Chamber of Commerce) inaugurated its Artificial Intelligence Committee, accompanied by an industry matchmaking event at the LuoHu HarmonyOS Ecosystem Tower. Nearly 90 representatives from universities, industry associations, venture funds, AI … Read more
A Shenzhen hazardous-industry robotics startup took a tens-of-millions A1 round, and the bet is on dirty work Investors are putting real money into robots that do the dirty, dangerous work humans avoid, not the ones that pose for cameras. Xuanchuang Robotics, a Shenzhen firm focused on embodied intelligence for hazardous and chemical-industrial settings, has closed … Read more