XPeng's IRON walked off the line. Mass production is still a target.

XPeng says its IRON humanoid has completed assembly and walked off an automated production line under its own power. According to the company, more than 80 percent of the core manufacturing steps are automated, and it calls the line the world's first automated production line for advanced humanoids. Mass production is still targeted for the end of 2026. No throughput figure was given, which is the gap between a line-completion event and a factory.

The robot

IRON has 76 degrees of freedom, 21 of them in each hand. It runs on three of XPeng's own AI chips, with the models on the robot rather than in the cloud, and is meant to carry out tasks without remote control. CEO He Xiaopeng framed the bigger goal as an ambition: he hopes the robot gains true generalization, so it can take on dangerous, repetitive or unpleasant work.

The money and the plan

XPeng's robotics unit recently closed a $900 million funding round at a post-money valuation of $6.3 billion, which it calls the largest single round in China's embodied-AI sector so far. The company expects much higher margins on humanoids than on its cars; that is an expectation, not a result. First deployments go into XPeng's own stores and facilities, with a commercial launch in China and abroad planned for 2027.