Huawei making moves in China’s robotics industry with Jimu investment, new embodied AI hub

Huawei Technologies, a formidable player in fields from smartphones to electric vehicles, is also looming large in China’s fragmented robotics industry amid the country’s drive to be a global leader in the field.

The Shenzhen-based telecommunications giant, which is the face of China’s self-sufficiency drive to break US sanctions, last week injected 3 billion yuan (US$413 million) into a subsidiary called Dongguan Jimu Machinery, according to corporate database Qichacha.

The move to increase the capital base of the fully-owned unit to 3.89 billion yuan from 870 million yuan has fanned speculation that Huawei is gearing up to enter the robotics industry. Huawei has not publicly disclosed Jimu’s business activities and declined to comment when contacted on Tuesday.

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Public corporate data showed that Jimu is engaged in electronics component manufacturing.

Jimu is headed by Li Jianguo, an executive director at Huawei and the president of its manufacturing department, according to Qichacha.

A technician adjusts CASBOT 01, a humanoid robot, at a laboratory in Beijing, November 12, 2024. Photo: Xinhua alt=A technician adjusts CASBOT 01, a humanoid robot, at a laboratory in Beijing, November 12, 2024. Photo: Xinhua>

Huawei’s increased investment in Jimu comes a month after it opened an embodied artificial intelligence (AI) centre in Shenzhen, focused on integrating AI into physical entities like robots.

The Huawei (Shenzhen) Global Embodied AI Industry Innovation Centre started operations last month. Huawei will use the centre to integrate the embodied AI capabilities of its various teams, and build “key foundational technologies” involving areas such as embodied AI models and computing power, according to the Shenzhen municipal government.

The Huawei embodied AI centre has also signed partnerships with Shenzhen-based robotics companies including Leju Robot and Han’s Robot.

China’s robotics industry is growing rapidly, generating huge demand for components such as chips. According to the World Robotics 2024 report published last month by the International Federation of Robotics, China has surpassed Germany and Japan in the adoption of industrial robots.

Huawei first tested the waters in robotics in April 2022, when it announced a partnership with Shanghai-based Dataa Robotics. The companies would work together to develop multimodal large models and new robotics applications, and Dataa would use Huawei’s Ascend AI computing service, they said.