On September 8, 2026, XPENG's IRON humanoid robot autonomously walked off the production line in Guangzhou, China. The company states this is the first high-level general-purpose humanoid robot manufactured on a production line to do so without human assistance or remote control. The manufacturing process uses automotive-grade quality control with automation levels exceeding 80%.
The robot's supply chain is highly integrated with XPENG's EV business, sharing over 85% of its components. IRON is powered by three in-house Turing AI chips, providing a combined computing power of 2250 TOPS. It utilizes a Physical AI foundation model and a multi-modal LLM that supports bilingual interaction in English and Chinese, as well as facial recognition and long-term memory.
Physically, IRON stands 173 cm tall and weighs 65 kg. It features 76 degrees of freedom, including 21 in each hand, and a bio-inspired spinal structure for human-like movement. The robot is capable of autonomous obstacle avoidance and autonomous charging, including the ability to to plug and unplug connectors independently.
XPENG's robotics division recently raised over $900 million at a post-money valuation of over $6.3 billion. This funding is intended to ramp up production for commercialization. The company claims to be the only Chinese robotics firm with a fully in-house end-to-end technology stack covering AI models, data infrastructure, and manufacturing.
Initial deployment of IRON will take place in XPENG showrooms and campuses to support sales and tours. Further in-house verification of scenarios is planned for 4Q 2026, with the first external customer deliveries in China and overseas markets starting in 2027. The primary focus will be on the retail and service industries before expanding into commercial, industrial, and home environments.
