Driven by rapid AI breakthroughs and a push for industrial upgrades, China's leading internet companies on the Chinese mainland are locked in an escalating race for dominance in the humanoid robot and embodied intelligence sector. Their playbooks fall into two camps: ecosystem-driven investments and in-house R&D.
Ecosystem-Driven Investments: Alibaba & Baidu
Baidu Ventures (BV) has poured resources into frontier robotics, backing Vital Motion with nearly RMB 100 million across two seed rounds. BV also joined Zhiyuan Robotics' A+ round and teamed up on 'cloud training + edge computing' for education-focused humanoids.
Alibaba Cloud has matched this approach, investing close to RMB 500 million in startups like StarDrive Epoch and Zuji Dynamics. At the 2025 Boao Forum, Alibaba's AI chief Xu Dong unveiled plans to embed the Qwen2.5-Omni multimodal model into embodied robotics hardware. CEO Wu Yongming pledged to channel more into AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years than in the past decade.
R&D-Intensive Approach: Tencent & Meituan
Tencent has balanced external dealsâraising its stake in Zhiyuan Robotics and co-leading a $100 million round for Whale Intelligenceâwith its in-house RoboticsX lab. Last September, the lab debuted 'Xiaowu' generation five, now pivoting to cloud computing and big data partnerships.
Meituan has emerged as a prolific investor through Meituan Dragonball, backing Yushi Technology's RMB 10 billion Series B++ and Galaxy Universal Robot's RMB 700 million angel round. Its Robotics Research Institute, launched in 2022, focuses on robots for unmanned pharmacies, food delivery and more.
Measuring the Race
Rather than going broad, each heavyweight aligns robotics initiatives with core strengths. Whether through cloud-driven ecosystems or dedicated labs, these firms are building sustainable moats by fusing software, hardware and capital.
As the global race for humanoid robots heats up, market acceptance, regulation and tech milestones will test these divergent strategies. For now, China's tech giants remain cautiously optimistic: the next wave of embodied AI could define the next decade of competitive advantage.
Reference(s):
bjnews.com.cn
