MetaX and UBTECH's robot-chip venture raises RMB 500 million angel round, aiming past NVIDIA Thor by 2028

Xixuan Chuangzhi (曦选创智), a Wuxi chip company that GPU maker MetaX and humanoid maker UBTECH set up in May, has raised RMB 500 million in an angel round, Shanghai Securities News reported on Nov. 11. Granite Asia (纪源资本) and Matrix Partners China co-led, and eight other firms followed, among them SAIC Hengxu Capital.

That is a large first check for a company with no product yet, and the schedule shows what it buys. Xixuan's first chip is a robot system-on-chip meant to run both high-level reasoning and motion control, and the company says its development goal is to "comprehensively surpass" NVIDIA's Thor. A development platform for partners is due in 2027, the first SoC and a complete embodied AI package in 2028. Thor is a chip customers are building on now: on Nov. 9 Kakao Mobility signed for a driving computer with two of them. What investors are paying for is a domestic robot computer that UBTECH and other Chinese makers can plan around, more than a faster one.

The money goes to chip and platform R&D, a software toolchain, hiring, and joint validation with robot makers and industry customers before mass delivery. Chairman Chen Weiliang, MetaX's founder, promised compatibility, so that "the work developers have already done carries over." The 2027 development boards are where robot makers will find out whether it does.