DiDi Makes First Investment in Embodied AI as Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing Secures Y100 Million Series A+ Funding

On July 8, Number 42 Wave reported that Beijing Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing") recently completed an A+ funding round worth hundreds of millions of yuan. This round was led by Didi Chuxing, with the Beijing Information Industry Fund making additional investments.

This investment marks Didi's first foray into the field of embodied AI robots. Didi's involvement could provide valuable data sources for Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing's "one brain, multiple forms" approach.

According to information from Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing, before this financing round, the company had already completed three previous rounds of funding.

In March 2023, Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing completed its seed round, receiving investment from Xiaomi Group and Yaru Angel Investment under Professor Wang Tianmiao.

In June 2023, it completed its angel round, securing investment from the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and Li Wanqiang.

In November 2024, it completed its Series A round, obtaining investment from iFlytek and the Beijing Information Industry Fund.

Among these investors, Li Wanqiang, one of Xiaomi's founders, participated in the investment during the early stages of Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing's establishment.

Public information shows that Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing. It is a technology company focused on the research and development of general AI robots. The founding team hails from tech giants such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Microsoft, and ByteDance, and graduated from prestigious universities including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Nanjing University, and Beihang University.

Qiao Zhongliang, founder and CEO of Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing, is one of Xiaomi's founding members. He previously served as the head of MIUI R&D, overseeing products from MIUI 9 to MIUI 12. Co-founder Wang Wenlin formerly served as General Manager of Xiaomi's Software System Platform Department, where he led the development of "Xiaomi Brain" and the IoT system.

Regarding Embodied AI, Qiao Zhongliang previously stated that Embodied AI does not necessarily require end-to-end large models that fuse perception, planning/control, and execution into a single architecture. While this is a path worth exploring, it demands massive amounts of data and presents greater challenges regarding stability and performance. VLA (Vision-Language-Action) is currently one of the most promising directions toward advanced Embodied AI. Even if full-scenario VLA is not achieved, single-task VLA still requires sufficient generalization capabilities and offers significant value, making autonomous driving itself an excellent application scenario.

In terms of products, Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing's core offering is its self-developed general robot brain, "Xiaoyu Brain." This technology enables robots to perform various tasks in industrial environments, with key advantages lying in "high precision, high robustness, and high generalization."

In terms of implementation scenarios, back in July 2024, Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing entered into a strategic partnership with Tangshan Panasonic, a joint venture with Panasonic, to jointly develop advanced large-model intelligent welding robots. Previously, a leading heavy industry enterprise signed a strategic procurement agreement for 100 welding robots with Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing, and the joint operation of the first batch of products has already been launched.

Qiao Zhongliang stated that Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing will continue to focus on core scenarios in manufacturing. "Over the next decade, we will continue to layout key industrial capabilities: critical processes such as welding, cutting, and material handling, while accelerating expansion into high-precision fields like aerospace."