Tech2 hrs ago

X Square Robot Gets Xiaomi-Led Series B Funding, Aims for May Home Robot Trials

X Square Robot’s Xiaomi‑led Series B funding and Wall‑B AI model set the stage for in‑home humanoid trials starting May 25.

Alex Mercer/3 min/NG

Senior Tech Correspondent

TweetLinkedIn
X Square Robot Gets Xiaomi-Led Series B Funding, Aims for May Home Robot Trials
Source: CaixinglobalOriginal source

X Square Robot announced a Series B round led by Xiaomi’s strategic investment arm and unveiled its Wall‑B AI model. The startup plans to test its newest humanoid robots in real homes by the end of May.

Context Founded in December 2023, X Square Robot emerged from a wave of Chinese startups pursuing embodied AI. Early backers included ByteDance, which contributed to a 1‑billion‑yuan Series A++ round in January 2024. Alibaba Cloud led a nearly 1‑billion‑yuan Series A+ round in September 2024, alongside CAS Investment. SAIC Capital and a CICC‑SAIC fund co‑led a late‑February 2024 round that raised hundreds of millions of yuan, pushing the post‑money valuation above 10 billion yuan. These investments gave the company access to cloud infrastructure, manufacturing expertise, and financial runway.

Key Facts Xiaomi Corp.’s strategic investment arm served as the lead investor in the Series B round, though the exact capital amount remains undisclosed. The company simultaneously introduced the Wall‑B AI model, a system that fuses visual input, language commands, and action data to teach robots basic physics through joint vision‑language‑action training. Training data came from real‑home environments, allowing the model to learn how objects behave when pushed, lifted, or stacked. X Square Robot stated that in‑home testing will commence by late May, with a target start date of May 25, 2025. The trials will involve a limited number of units performing tasks such as fetching items, opening doors, and navigating cluttered rooms.

What It Means The fresh capital and AI reveal underscore confidence among major Chinese investors that humanoid robots can soon leave controlled labs. Industry forecasts often cite unpredictability of households as a barrier lasting several years, yet X Square Robot’s schedule challenges that view. If the May trials succeed, the startup could accelerate toward pilot partnerships with appliance makers or property developers. Conversely, any setbacks would highlight the remaining gaps in robustness, safety, and cost‑effectiveness for consumer‑grade robots.

What to watch next Analysts will monitor the trial reports for metrics like task completion rate, error frequency, and user satisfaction scores. Follow‑on funding announcements later in 2025 will reveal whether investors deem the technology ready for broader scaling. Regulatory bodies may also begin drafting guidelines for in‑home robot operation as the technology nears commercial readiness.

TweetLinkedIn

More in this thread

Reader notes

Loading comments...