30x Stock Shangwei New Materials Enters Robotics, Shares Fall Three Days After Launch
Shangwei New Materials, which surged in the secondary market last year after being acquired by AgiBot, has returned to the spotlight. On September 20, its consumer embodied-AI brand Qiyuan Robotics officially began selling two personal robots aimed at individuals and families.
Shangwei CEO Tian Hua said pricing determines how a brand positions its products, adding that the company's goal is to be "the Apple of robotics."
After the launch, the stock fell instead of rising: down 4.14% on September 21 and continuing to slide on September 22 and 23. Industry observers say the home scenario is the hardest nut to crack in embodied AI deployment.
Qiyuan Robotics introduced two personal robots, Q1 and T1. Q1 is billed as the world's first personal robot and the first small-size full-body force-controlled humanoid — 88 cm tall, 15 kg, foldable into a backpack, with customizable exterior components. T1 is described as the world's first transformable personal robot, 100 cm tall and 16 kg, able to switch autonomously between wheeled-legged humanoid and quadruped forms.
One product emphasizes "definable," the other "transformable," targeting developer toys and outdoor imaging respectively. The core scenarios are personal and family use, with the company trying to explore a consumer path for robots through the personal-robot category; children's programming, companionship and remote-controlled shooting are the core functions.
The approach is "fun first, useful later" — not one step to usefulness, but starting from fun and gradually making the robot useful. Zhang Xiaorong, dean of the Deep Tech Research Institute, says the route is sound: household robots are not yet reliable, so selling to kids and letting developers tinker is smarter than hyping an "all-purpose nanny." But once the novelty fades, real utility must emerge to sustain long-term value.
Qiyuan Robotics says it will keep building hardware, AI and ecosystem capabilities, and has launched the Qiyuan Star ecosystem plan, pledging 1 billion yuan over five years to co-build a robotics ecosystem. It also connected to Tencent Cloud's WorkBuddy, becoming the first embodied-AI company to do so. Zhang says this is a standard play of linking robot bodies to cloud models and tool ecosystems; the direction is right, and the key is not the connection but the quality of the closed loop.
On pricing, Songyan Power previously launched the small robot Xiaobumi for under 10,000 yuan, also aimed partly at children's programming. Qiyuan's prices are higher: Q1 at 19,999 yuan, Q1 Explorer at 26,999 yuan, T1 at 19,999 yuan, and T1 Pro at 29,999 yuan.
Zhang says the people willing to spend 20,000-30,000 yuan on a personal robot fall into three groups: families that value programming education, university and geek developers, and tech bloggers and gift buyers. Ordinary families will still hesitate after seeing specs and prices.
Shangwei's half-year report shows R&D spending of 180 million yuan, of which 164 million went to consumer embodied-AI robots, with R&D at 22.46% of revenue, up 19.72 percentage points year on year, pushing the company into a first-half loss. On September 20, Qiyuan Robotics also said it expects to invest 500 million yuan in R&D in 2026. The key question now is whether Qiyuan can achieve stable shipments, revenue and profit, and whether embodied AI can truly become Shangwei's second growth curve.