Xilect, a robot-chip startup founded by Chinese graphics processing unit (GPU) maker MetaX and humanoid robot maker UBTech Robotics, has completed an angel funding round of RMB 500 million (renminbi, the Chinese currency), according to a company announcement dated 12 November 2026 on xilect.com. TechNode reported the round on 13 November 2026. The company’s Chinese name is 曦选创智. This post reflects sources as of 14 November 2026.

The round

  • Lead investors: Xilect’s announcement says the round was co-led by 纪源资本 and 经纬创投, which are usually rendered in English as GGV Capital and Matrix Partners China (see the notes below).
  • Other investors: The announcement says eight more investors took part: 和利资本, 鼎晖龙芯创投, 上汽恒旭资本, 耀途资本, 正轩资本, 心资本, 优势资本 and 博雅创投.
  • Valuation: Shanghai Securities News, which cited UBTech, and Sina reported a post-money valuation of RMB 4 billion. Xilect’s announcement does not state a valuation, and TechNode’s report does not mention one.
  • Use of funds: The announcement says the money will go to the core chip and computing platform, a software toolchain, a larger research team, and joint validation with robot makers and industry customers ahead of volume delivery.

The chip and the timetable

The announcement describes the first in-house chip as a large-and-small-brain integrated system on chip (SoC) for robots, with chip definition built around multimodal perception, cognitive decision-making and motion coordination. TechNode’s report says the chip is designed to combine multimodal perception, decision-making and motion control on the robot itself. According to the announcement, the design uses a general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) as the core compute unit and a CUDA-like development ecosystem (CUDA is Nvidia’s software platform). It says Xilect plans a toolchain so that robot makers and model developers can move existing AI models between computing platforms.

The announcement states that the development goal is to comprehensively surpass Nvidia’s Thor chip, and its company profile says Nvidia Thor is the benchmark target for the chip and platform. A post on 21jingji.com credited to an account called Xinghe Business Observation says the target is Nvidia’s Jetson AGX Thor, in the company’s own account. These are goals set by the company. The sources read contain no performance test results.

Xilect plans to give industry partners a development and validation platform in 2027 and to release its first SoC product, with a matching embodied-intelligence solution, in 2028, according to the announcement. TechNode reports the same two dates. UBTech told Shanghai Securities News that it and Xilect define the on-device chip from the needs of embodied robots, which it listed as high compute, high bandwidth, low latency and low power, and that it has finished surveying application scenarios and is starting technical validation.

Company structure

The announcement says Xilect was founded in May 2026 and is based in Wuxi. Its chairman is Chen Weiliang, the founder of MetaX; its vice chairman is Zhou Jian, the founder of UBTech; and its chief executive is Yang Xianbo, a former senior vice president of the Chinese networking company H3C. Sina and Shanghai Securities News say UBTech, MetaX and a third company, Fenglong (锋龙股份), put up the founding capital. The 21jingji.com post says registered capital is RMB 100 million, with MetaX and UBTech holding 35.01 percent each and Fenglong 4.7 percent. It does not say whether those shares were measured before or after the angel round.

Where reports differ

The 21jingji.com post says the first SoC is planned to reach tape-out, the step of sending a finished chip design to a factory, in the second half of 2027 and to enter mass production in 2028. The company announcement and TechNode give a 2027 development platform and a 2028 first chip, and do not mention tape-out or mass-production dates. On timing, IT Home, citing 21st Century Business Herald, reported the round on 11 November 2026, one day before the date shown on the company’s announcement.

Sources and notes

Sources: Xilect’s announcement (in Chinese), read in full; TechNode, read in full; Sina, Shanghai Securities News via 10jqka, the 21jingji.com post and IT Home via ifeng (a user-uploaded page), all in Chinese and read. All Chinese text was translated by Lens. The announcement gives the lead investors only by their Chinese names; GGV Capital and Matrix Partners China are the usual English names for them, but none of the sources read states that. The RMB 4 billion valuation and the ownership shares come only from the media reports named above, not from the company announcement. Searches for LatePost, 36Kr and Yicai coverage found no Xilect article. No page returned an error.

Image: Close-up photograph of the silicon die of a Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC 7300LC microprocessor. Photo: Thomas Schanz (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons; cropped. Stand-in image: not a photo of a chip made by Xilect, MetaX or UBTech.