MetaX-UBTech Chip Venture Xilect Raises 500 Million Yuan Angel Round

Xilect, the robot-chip joint venture between Chinese GPU designer MetaX and humanoid robot maker UBTech Robotics, has closed a 500 million yuan angel round, roughly $75 million, to build a domestic computing platform for embodied AI. DigiTimes reported that the venture benchmarks its platform against Nvidia's Thor.

GGV Capital and Matrix Partners China co-led the round, according to a report by 21st Century Business Herald carried by IT Home. The company, formally registered as Xixuan Chuangzhi Technology (Wuxi), said the funds will fund core chip and computing-platform R&D, its software toolchain, a larger R&D team, and joint validation with robot makers and industry customers. Other investors and the valuation were not disclosed.

Who owns and runs Xilect?

MetaX and UBTech signed the joint venture agreement in Nanjing on June 11. The company was registered in Wuxi in May with 100 million yuan of registered capital. MetaX and UBTech each hold 35.01% of the venture, while Zhejiang Fenglong holds 4.7%.

MetaX chairman Chen Weiliang chairs the venture. UBTech founder and CEO Zhou Jian serves as vice chairman. Former New H3C senior vice president Yang Xianbo is chief executive. The company operates R&D centers in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing.

Yang said in June that the product would be developed to compete with top international brands while being designed specifically for embodied AI. Tape-out is planned for the second half of 2027, with mass production following in 2028.

When the venture was announced in June, the partners said only that the product would benchmark against top international brands. DigiTimes has now reported that Nvidia's Thor is the concrete target.

What is the engineering problem?

MetaX designs data-center GPUs. A humanoid robot runs on batteries, and the power budget is tight. Analyst Tian Feng told National Business Daily in June that after motors and sensors, the compute budget for a robot is often only a dozen to a few dozen watts. An Nvidia H100 data-center GPU draws about 700 watts.

That gap defines the venture's core technical risk. Tian said success depends on designing an edge architecture from scratch rather than shrinking an existing GPU design. The contrast between a 20-watt robot budget and a 700-watt H100 frames the challenge.

How strong are the parents?

Both backers bring commercial traction. MetaX reported a third-quarter profit this month as demand for domestic AI chips grew. UBTech sold 1,079 full-size humanoid robots in 2025 for revenue of 820 million yuan, according to the June announcement. That announcement pitched UBTech's factory deployments as a test bed for the new chips.

The structure gives the venture silicon expertise on one side and a robot fleet on the other. MetaX contributes GPU design capability. UBTech contributes a customer base and deployment data from real factory environments.

What happens next?

The 500 million yuan angel round funds R&D through the design phase, but tape-out remains more than two years away. Mass production in 2028 would place Xilect's first silicon in the market as Nvidia's robot computing platforms deepen their hold, and the venture's success will hinge on whether an edge architecture built from scratch can match Thor-class performance within a power budget of dozens of watts.