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Author: Qiu Xiaofen, Chang Minxiao

Editor｜Su Jianxun

Amid the robot craze, major companies are secretly and actively planning their own embodied intelligence businesses.

36Kr learned that Xiaomi Group and robot master Wang Tianmiao had previously invested in a furniture smart technology company called "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing". The company was established in February 2023 and has completed100 million yuan seed round financing, funded by Xiaomi Group, robotics expert Wang Tianmiao, and Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence.

36Kr learned that this is also Xiaomi’s first overseas investment in a company in the field of built-in intelligence.

It is understood thatThe core founding team of "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing" was once the senior executives of Xiaomi:Qiao Zhongliang, the founder of "Xiaoyu Zhizao", is one of the original members of Xiaomi. He was once the head of MIUI R&D and was responsible for products such as MIUI 9 to MIUI 12. He left Xiaomi in January 2023.

Wang Wenlin, co-founder of Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing, was formerly the general manager of Xiaomi's software system platform department and led the development of Xiaomi Brain and IoT systems. Other team members come from Xiaomi, Huawei, ByteDance, Microsoft and other companies.

According to 36Kr, "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing"Mainly create embodied intelligent robots with "one brain and multiple shapes"——Use an intelligent agent (brain) with high generalization ability to control robot entities of different forms in multiple scenarios.

Generally speaking, "one brain" usually refers to a large multimodal model, and there are many options for the shape of the robot, such as quadruped robots, composite robots, humanoid robots, and so on.

"Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing" products will first be launched in the industrial field. In terms of commercial progress, 36Kr learned that "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing" had previously received a grant from a leading company in the heavy industry.HundredsWelding robot orders have been placed and joint operations of the first products have begun.

However, in addition to secretly incubating an external company on the periphery, Xiaomi has actually made preparations for both scenarios and has already laid out embodied intelligence business internally.

As early as 2021, Xiaomi had established a robotics laboratory, and has since launched products such as the full-size humanoid bionic robot CyberOne and the bionic quadruped robot dog Cyberdog;

By 2023, Xiaomi separated this business from the Xiaomi system and established "Beijing Xiaomi Robotics Technology Co., Ltd." In June of this year, the company received strategic investment from Yizhuang State Investment.

After making certain progress in product research and development, Xiaomi's humanoid robot "CyberOne" is also promoting its application in industrial scenarios. It is reported that it will "intern" on the manufacturing production line of Xiaomi's automobile factory in the future.

Lei Jun previously stated at a press conference that the intelligence and mechanical capabilities behind CyberOne were all fully developed by Xiaomi's Robotics Lab, "with countless software, hardware, and algorithm development work behind it, and huge investment."

However, although it is not clear at present how "Xiaoyu Intelligent Manufacturing" will be related to Xiaomi's own production line in the future, for Xiaomi, by combining internal project incubation with external investment, it can also shorten the layout time and occupy a position in the next wave of artificial intelligence in the embodied intelligence craze.

"Nearly 100 new companies have emerged in half a year, and "embodied intelligence" also has a spring | 36Kr's new trend"

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