XILECT, a Chinese startup building chips for humanoid robots, has raised 500 million yuan (about $70 million) in an angel round, betting that the next generation of robots needs a single chip that can think and move at the same time. The round, closed on November 12, values the company at 4 billion yuan (about $555 million) — a striking figure for a business founded only in May.
The round was co-led by GGV Capital and Matrix Partners China, with Heli Capital, CDH Longxin, SAIC Hengxu and other investors taking part. XILECT is a joint venture of GPU designer MetaX and humanoid maker UBTECH, which each own 35.01% of the company, with a third backer, Fenglong, holding 4.7%.
One chip for the robot's brain and reflexes
XILECT's plan is to build a single system-on-chip that handles multimodal perception, decision-making and motion control on the robot itself, instead of sending that work to the cloud. The company calls it a "brain-and-cerebellum integrated" design — one piece of silicon doing the work that today takes several chips.
Its stated design goal is to surpass Nvidia's Thor platform, the chip most humanoid makers currently build on. That is the company's own target, not a measured result: XILECT has no product yet and no revenue, and its first chip is not due until 2028.
A $555 million bet on a six-month-old company
The company, whose operating entity is called Xixuan Chuangzhi, was incorporated in Wuxi in May 2026. Its roadmap gives industry partners a development and verification platform in 2027, with the first system-on-chip and an accompanying embodied-intelligence solution to follow in 2028. Tape-out — the point at which a chip design is sent for manufacturing — is expected in the second half of 2027.
The money will fund core chip and computing-platform research, software tooling for deploying AI models on robots, expansion of the research team, and joint validation work with robot manufacturers and industrial customers.
China's humanoid gold rush
The raise lands in the middle of a funding surge for Chinese robotics. Reuters has reported $12.9 billion across 322 embodied-AI deals in China in the first half of 2026 alone, as investors race to back the hardware behind humanoid robots.
For UBTECH and MetaX, the venture deepens an existing partnership: a domestic chip that lets Chinese robots run perception and control locally, without relying on foreign silicon. Whether XILECT can deliver a chip that beats Thor remains unproven — but investors have now put $70 million behind the attempt.
