The Belt 
Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs released a model in September that turns a handful of ordinary photographs into a walkable three-dimensional scene and, in the company’s own demonstration, into a training ground for a robot. The cost it attacks is not compute. It is the weeks a team spends building a simulated world by hand. Atlas … Read more
Xiaomi put one robot brain through two tests in the same week: eight hours of continuous work on an automotive assembly line, and more than thirty minutes of household tasks across three rooms. The industrial run took place at a final assembly station handling centre-console side panel sequencing. The domestic run covered the company’s youth … Read more
JD Logistics runs more than 3,600 warehouses and employs more than 600,000 people. It has also built nine families of robot, and the company’s own framing of them is unusually blunt: the industry should test robots inside its existing operations, not in a demonstration hall. In September the company put nine machines on one stand … Read more
A Shanghai company that builds six-armed industrial robots has closed a Pre-B round of several hundred million yuan, and says its 2026 revenue will roughly double on last year. Sazhi Intelligent took the money from Jiantou Investment, Nantong Investment Management and Yunqi Capital. Earlier backers include Shenzhen Capital Group, Shunwei Capital, Jinyu Maowu, Xiaoxiang Venture, … Read more
There is a state-backed robotics testbed in Hangzhou that booked less than RMB 450,000 of revenue in the first nine months of 2026 and lost more than RMB 15 million. Seventeen companies have just paid to own a piece of it. The National AI Application Pilot Base for Embodied Intelligence raised RMB 200 million, lifting … Read more
Korea’s largest farm machinery maker has spent two years looking for a partner that can supply robot joints at volume. It found one in Shenzhen, and the two sides are now preparing a joint venture rather than a supply contract. Yiyou Technology signed a memorandum of understanding with Daedong Group in Shanghai on 27 October. … Read more
Blue Vector Intelligent Technology of Hangzhou and CATL signed a strategic cooperation agreement and a product agreement on 2 November. Under the terms, CATL will develop a customised aviation power battery for Blue Vector’s SKYLA V30 aircraft and becomes the exclusive battery partner, with the two working jointly on electric aviation technology. The cooperation extends … Read more
Magna reported third quarter 2026 results on 2 November with sales of USD 10.1bn, down 4 per cent year on year, and adjusted EBIT of USD 683m, up 11 per cent. The margin expansion came while revenue was contracting, which is the harder version of the exercise. The company attributed the profit line to cost … Read more
GAC Group’s Yinpai battery unit opened its Thailand plant in Chonburi on 29 October, with the first locally assembled pack coming off the line. It is the group’s first battery pack facility outside China and completes local pairing of vehicle assembly and pack supply in the country. Phase one is planned at 7,000 packs a … Read more
Guangdong Lingyi iTech has signed a strategic framework agreement with Jingjinji Runze Digital Information of Langfang, and the two will cooperate on complete robots, core components, research and deployment scenarios. They also intend to establish a joint venture in Hengnan county, Hunan, to manufacture robot parts and finished machines from a local smart manufacturing base. … Read more