He Xiaopeng Assumes Role as CEO of Robotics Business, Sprinting for Year-End Mass Production

On June 10, He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of XPeng Group, announced in an all-staff letter that he would personally assume the role of CEO for the robotics business, effective immediately.

In the letter, He Xiaopeng compared the current commercialization stage of the company's humanoid robot, IRON, to the eve of the launch of XPeng's first mass-produced vehicle, the G3, eight years ago. This change in personnel and business structure signifies that XPeng has officially elevated the strategic priority of its humanoid robotics business to the highest group level, equal to its core automotive business.

With the group's top executive directly leading the innovative hardware business line, the core objective typically points to an urgent need for cross-departmental resource allocation.

According to information revealed in the internal letter, XPeng's robotics business has currently integrated full-chain modules within the group, including hardware, large AI models, supply chain, and precision manufacturing.

Moving from frontier R&D to mass production and delivery means the business focus must shift comprehensively from mere breakthroughs in technical specifications to cost control, supply chain restructuring, and ramping up manufacturing yield rates.

He Xiaopeng's personal takeover aims to break down departmental barriers, seamlessly transferring XPeng's accumulated supply chain bargaining power, quality control standards, and software-hardware synergy experience from complete vehicle manufacturing to the robotics sector.

In the deep waters of mass production, leaders of individual business lines often struggle to leverage the group's underlying assets. Centralized authority at the top level is a necessary means to drive cost reduction and large-scale implementation for complex hardware.

The internal letter framed this move as a key step in XPeng's transformation from an intelligent automotive company to a physical AI company. From the perspective of underlying industrial logic, this is not a blind cross-industry leap but an inevitable outcome of technology reuse.

Over the past few years, XPeng has invested heavily with high sunk costs in end-to-end autonomous driving large models. The embodied intelligence relied upon by humanoid robots, as well as vision-language-action models, share a high degree of commonality with advanced autonomous driving in terms of environmental perception and planning-control algorithms.

XPeng aims to extend its intelligent driving algorithm capabilities from "four-wheeled mobility devices" to "general-purpose anthropomorphic terminals" through the IRON robot. The emphasis in the internal letter on "local natural language communication and independent thinking," while abandoning reliance on the cloud, is essentially an extreme externalization of its edge computing platform and algorithm generalization capabilities.

Notably, the "G3 Moment" mentioned by He Xiaopeng in the letter implies not only the proximity of mass production but also the objective risks of crossing the hardware survival threshold.

The delivery of the G3 in 2018 marked the starting point for XPeng to complete the closed loop of car manufacturing from 0 to 1. In 2026, although the humanoid robotics sector is experiencing unprecedented hype, the entire industry has yet to produce a true benchmark for large-scale commercial positive cycles.

From a fundamental perspective, XPeng's core automotive business is undergoing a critical structural adjustment and market share battle.

To expand its customer base and improve its profit structure, XPeng has broken away from its previous single pure-electric product route, comprehensively deploying extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs) to secure more stable market share and operating cash flow.

Against the backdrop of needing continuous investment to win the "elimination round" in the auto market, balancing the capital-intensive and technology-intensive mass production of humanoid robots poses a severe test for XPeng Group's overall capital efficiency, supply chain resilience, and He Xiaopeng's own energy allocation.

He Xiaopeng's assumption of the robotics CEO role is a phased confirmation of internal R&D progress and a clear external strategic restructuring, indicating that XPeng intends to articulate a new industrial logic through physical AI.

However, just like the perilous early stages of car manufacturing, moving from a concept on the exhibition stand to a useful and durable mass-produced tool, IRON must undergo a rigorous test of Bill of Materials (BOM) costs and validation in commercial scenarios.

While the vision is grand, the industry's verification standards remain cold and unforgiving. Its success or failure will depend on the actual operational capacity of subsequently self-built mass production factories and the real-world performance of the initial units used in XPeng stores.

Below is the original text of the all-staff letter:

Let dreams land in mass production, embarking together on a new decade of physical AI!

Dear colleagues,

Today, I formally announce to everyone that, in addition to serving as CEO of XPeng Group, I will personally assume the role of "CEO" for the robotics business, effective immediately. I made this decision because we are standing at a historic turning point—XPeng Robotics is officially on the eve of mass production and commercialization.

This is not a simple business upgrade, but an important step in XPeng Group's transformation from an "intelligent automotive company" to a "physical AI company." The robotics team has undergone several years of technological accumulation and breakthroughs in the early stages, achieving excellent results and contributions. The R&D phase has seen remarkable success. Over the past three years, with your ultimate pursuit of technology, you have transformed IRON from a concept into a product that can walk, run, interact, and work. We adhere to full-stack self-research in building robots with the same rigor as car manufacturing, overcoming one challenge after another—from chips to joints, from the whole machine to dexterous hands, and from cerebellum iteration to brain development. Let us give a warm round of applause for everyone's efforts and achievements! Now, we are getting closer and closer to achieving the goal of large-scale mass production of the world's first high-end humanoid robot. This stage is equivalent to XPeng eight years ago, when we were about to complete the launch of our first car, the G3, standing on the threshold of mass production and delivery. Today, technology continues to advance, requirements are higher, and the stage is larger.

1. Over the past year, the company and I have invested more resources and time into the robotics business. Basically, every week, I dedicate a full day to deep thinking, discussion, and decision-making surrounding the robotics business and team. I also frequently engage in in-depth communication with relevant teams and numerous partners on a daily basis. Our direction in robotics is vastly different from the approaches of many other manufacturers, with distinct differences. Throughout this process, I have deeply felt the immense significance, historical opportunity, and difficulty of success in this endeavor.

2. Since its debut last year, the robotics business has remained very low-key, avoiding marketing, guarding against arrogance and rashness, and focusing on R&D. We have already achieved significant breakthroughs and progress. XPeng's robotics business is now ahead of the industry, positioned on the eve of mass production. At the same time, the industry is heating up and competition is fierce. We have clearly seen the direction and timing of victory, but we still need arduous implementation and choices requiring extremely high directional judgment.

3. The robotics business currently integrates XPeng Group's internal comprehensive capabilities, including various business modules such as hardware, large AI models, supply chain, precision manufacturing, marketing, and sales. The complexity is high. At this crucial moment of mass production and commercialization, we need to mobilize these resources more effectively and strengthen deeper overall collaboration, forming XPeng Group's advantages into a fist. This is an integration of XPeng's years of practical experience in software-hardware synergy. We possess huge advantages and combat effectiveness. Let us fight this decisive battle well together.

4. Facing the era of physical AI, XPeng's direction in embodied intelligence, represented by robotics, holds enormous historical opportunities and development potential. It is difficult enough, interesting enough, and has a high enough barrier to entry. I hope that in the future, it will offer more possibilities and greater development.

The all-out effort by myself, the robotics team, and many new colleagues is intended to send the clearest signal to everyone: we will devote more energy to the robotics business, connect all group resources, and replicate the supply chain, manufacturing, quality, and globalization capabilities accumulated in the automotive business to the robotics business without reservation. We aim to deliver IRON to customers with the fastest speed and highest quality.

Colleagues, we are creating history. The robots we are building are very different from current industry robots:

1. We aim to build the most anthropomorphic robots, our partners, letting them enter our work and lives, rather than making simple and powerful machines;

2. We aim to build robots capable of local natural language communication and thinking, rather than machines controlled locally by remote controls with capabilities residing in the cloud;

3. We aim to build the safest robots, with full coverage, lightweight movements, supporting SEP and data privacy security protection, rather than machines walking one meter away from the human body;

4. We aim to be the first to achieve large-scale mass production of high-end robots, which requires full-stack self-research of both software and hardware + cross-domain fusion, and the self-construction of large-scale data centers and mass production factories;

Colleagues, the next few months will be the most arduous and critical sprint period. We must solve every detail problem in mass production, polish every function, and ensure that what is delivered to users is a product that is truly usable, easy to use, and durable.

When our IRON robot enters XPeng stores, when it begins to truly change people's lifestyles, we will feel immensely proud of today. Let us fight together, let dreams land in mass production, and embark together on a new decade of physical AI!

He Xiaopeng

June 10, 2026