X Square hits $2.8B valuation as China's big four all back the same robot brain
What's the deal? Chinese embodied AI startup X Square has closed a Series C that values it at 20B yuan (roughly $2.8B), making it the Greater Bay Area's first robotics company to cross that line.
Two months after announcing its B round in April 2026, the two-and-a-half-year-old company quietly completed three more rounds — B+, B++, and C — all now settled.
Why now? Embodied AI is China's hottest funding race of 2026. Q1 2026 alone saw more than 50 disclosed deals across 30-plus startups, up nearly 60% year on year.
What stands out is the investor list. X Square is the only Chinese embodied AI firm led separately by all four internet giants — Meituan, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Xiaomi — across its earlier rounds, with Xiaomi backing it three times.
The newer rounds widened the circle further. State-backed funds piled in, including the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, SDIC Innovation, and China Insurance Investment, while China MobileDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → invested twice.
Industrial backers joined too: Honor, CheryDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Shenyang Automotive, and 58.com Group want robots for their own supply chains — home-service bots for 58, factory-line bots for carmakers. Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and Source Code Capital round out the top-tier VCs.
What could go wrong? X Square is a pure "brain" play, building end-to-end embodied AI models rather than selling hardware. Its main business is still in the pilot stage.
That puts it in the same valuation tier as UnitreeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which already ships robots at scale, turns a profit, and cleared its IPO review in June 2026. X Square has no comparable shipments or cash flow to anchor its number.
The bet rests on whether its model can generalise from narrow tasks like housekeeping and assembly lines to thousands of industries it has never seen.
The signal: Dealroom still classifies X Square as an early-stage company, a reminder of how far its $2.8B valuation runs ahead of its commercial maturity. That four corporate giants who normally compete head-on — Meituan, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Xiaomi — each chose to lead a separate round signals less a bet on near-term revenue than a collective hedge that whoever owns the robot "brain" owns the next platform layer.
Read more: 36Kr
Image credit: X Square Robot
