MetaX- and UBTech-Backed Robotics Chip Startup Xilect Raises RMB 500 Million

Xilect, a robotics chip startup jointly founded by Chinese GPU maker MetaX and humanoid robot maker UBTech Robotics, has raised RMB 500 million in an angel round. The financing places the young company among a growing group of hardware startups seeking to supply computing platforms for embodied AI systems.

The company will use the proceeds to develop its first chip and supporting software, expand its engineering team, and test its platform with robot manufacturers. Xilect is positioning the funding as a step toward building a complete hardware and software base for robots that need to perceive, decide, and act in real time.

Xilect is designing a system-on-chip that combines multimodal perception, decision-making, and motion control on the robot itself. By placing these functions closer to the machine, the architecture is intended to support local processing rather than depending entirely on remote computing resources. The design targets a key challenge in robotics: integrating different workloads into a single platform that can operate under the size, power, and thermal limits of a robot body.

The startup is also developing a software toolchain intended to help robot makers run existing AI models on the platform. Such a toolchain would matter because robot developers often rely on a mix of open-source and proprietary models, and they need ways to deploy those models efficiently on embedded hardware. Xilect's approach aims to reduce integration work for manufacturers and make its chip easier to adopt.

Xilect plans to give partners a development and testing platform in 2027 and to release its first chip in 2028. The timeline indicates that the company is still in an early phase, with several years of engineering and validation work ahead before mass production or broad commercial deployment. The platform stage is expected to allow robot makers to evaluate the chip architecture and software stack before the final silicon is available.

The startup's founding backers span two parts of the robotics supply chain. MetaX is a Chinese GPU maker, while UBTech Robotics is a humanoid robot maker. Their involvement links Xilect to both computing hardware expertise and real-world robot applications. That combination could help the startup align chip design with the needs of robot manufacturers from the outset.

The RMB 500 million angel round is notable for its size at such an early stage. Angel rounds are typically smaller and are used to fund initial team building and product definition. A round of this scale suggests that investors see long-term potential in specialized semiconductors for robots, even as the sector faces technical and commercial uncertainty.

Robotics chips must handle demanding workloads while meeting strict constraints on power consumption, heat, cost, and physical size. They also need software support that lets robot makers use existing AI models without rebuilding their stacks. Startups in this field face long development cycles, high design costs, and the challenge of winning design slots with manufacturers.

Xilect's plan to test its platform with robot manufacturers is central to its strategy. Close collaboration with potential customers could provide feedback on performance, reliability, and software compatibility before the first chip is released. The company expects to provide partners with a development and testing platform in 2027, followed by the first chip in 2028.

The available details do not include valuation, the full investor list, or technical specifications such as process node, performance targets, or power consumption. Those details will matter as Xilect moves from architecture design to silicon validation and commercial deployment.