The archive · AI & Models · Strategic decision · 2023–2026
X Square Robot bets on embodied intelligence 'brain'
Founded in December 2023, raised about RMB 2 billion in two years, backed by Alibaba Cloud.
X Square Robot (自变量机器人)
What the business is
Embodied intelligence company: self-develops general embodied intelligence large models (WALL-A series VLA) and hardware such as wheeled dual-arm robots and five-finger dexterous hands, targeting scenarios such as research and education, home services, and logistics sorting.
How it started
Founded in Shenzhen in December 2023. Founder and CEO Wang Qian earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Tsinghua University and is one of the earliest scholars in the world to introduce the attention (Attention) mechanism into neural networks; co-founder and CTO Wang Hao earned a PhD from Peking University and formerly served as head of the Fengshenbang large-model team at IDEA Research Institute (IDEA研究院封神榜大模型团队), leading R&D of China's first 10-billion-parameter large model and one of the earliest 100-billion-parameter large models, Ziya. From founding, the two established the technical path of achieving general embodied intelligence through an end-to-end unified large model.
What happened
In May 2025, it completed a Series A of several hundred million RMB, led by Meituan Strategic Investment (美团战投); in August, it released the fully self-developed wheeled dual-arm humanoid robot Quantum 2 (量子2号) and open-sourced Wall-OSS, an embodied foundation model for developers; in September, it announced a nearly RMB 1 billion Series A+ round led by Alibaba Cloud and Guoke Investment (国科投资) — this was Alibaba Cloud's first investment in an embodied intelligence project, and cumulative 8 rounds totaled about RMB 2 billion. On January 12, 2026, it announced completion of a RMB 1 billion Series A++ round, with investors including ByteDance, Sequoia China, and others, four months after the previous round; the two rounds totaled nearly RMB 2 billion.
How it ended up
As of January 2026, X Square Robot had launched three products: Quantum 1 (量子1号), Quantum 2, and a five-finger dexterous hand (五指灵巧手); after the Series A++ round, cumulative funding reached the RMB 3 billion scale. But according to Omdia data, humanoid robot industry shipments in 2025 were about 13,000 units, and X Square Robot was not on the list; 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道) directly said that in 2026 it 'needs to hurry to catch up on the commercialization lesson'.
Background
X Square Robot was founded in Shenzhen in December 2023, betting that embodied intelligence is stuck in the 'brain' rather than the hardware body. Founder Wang Qian earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Tsinghua University and is one of the earliest scholars worldwide to introduce the attention mechanism into neural networks; CTO Wang Hao had led one of China's first batches of 100-billion-parameter large models, Ziya; from day one, the two established an end-to-end unified large-model technical path and refused to do only hardware or only software.
The team chose the heavier path of full-stack self-development: self-developed master-slave teleoperation, exoskeleton, bodyless and other data-collection devices to accumulate high-quality real-robot data, then trained the 'WALL-A' series VLA (vision-language-action) manipulation large models, while also building robot bodies and dexterous hands. In August 2025, it released the wheeled dual-arm humanoid robot Quantum 2 and open-sourced the embodied foundation model Wall-OSS.
Capital quickly followed: in May 2025, Meituan Strategic Investment led a Series A of several hundred million RMB; in September, Alibaba Cloud and Guoke Investment led a nearly RMB 1 billion Series A+ round (Alibaba Cloud's first investment in an embodied intelligence project), with cumulative 8 rounds of about RMB 2 billion; on January 12, 2026, it completed another RMB 1 billion Series A++ round, with investors including ByteDance and Sequoia China, and the two rounds within four months totaled nearly RMB 2 billion.
The funding problem was temporarily solved, and the commercialization problem surfaced: according to Omdia data, humanoid robot shipments in 2025 were about 13,000 units, and X Square Robot was not on the list; 21st Century Business Herald evaluated that in 2026 it 'needs to hurry to catch up on the commercialization lesson'. As of September 2026, the company was still expanding, but revenue and order scale had no public data.
What has to be true
- Wang Qian judges that the essence of the next stage of competition in embodied intelligence is competition over foundation models built on data closed loops and model evolution capability.
- In the industry, body companies are favored by capital, while 'embodied brains' are scarce; he believes that the lack of a product-grade brain would limit robots' autonomous decision-making.
- The founding team has a background in attention mechanisms and large-model R&D, and choosing the brain path fits its own accumulation better than doing hardware.
- He believes China's embodied intelligence financing speed is not too fast but somewhat slow, one order of magnitude behind the United States, and needs to continue adding investment.
What can be applied
Betting on the 'brain' differentiates, but capital isn't commercial success; shipments and revenue are next.
Aftermath
By September 2026, raised about RMB 3 billion in 9 rounds. Moved to Aerospace Innovation Building in October 2025. Wang Qian called 2026 the 'year of qualitative change.' Commercialization undisclosed: 2025 humanoid shipments were 13,000 units, X Square not listed; revenue and orders for Quantum products remain private.
Sources
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