On May 12th, the inaugural Hong Kong Embodied AI Industry Summit and the 2026 Zhiyuan Partners Conference (Hong Kong) commenced.
At the summit, Zhiyuan outlined the evolution of the embodied AI industry along what it termed the "XYZ Curve." The X curve represents the initial development and experimentation phase, focused primarily on breakthroughs in body capabilities and locomotion, enabling robots to move like humans. The Y curve signifies the phase where, following intelligent breakthroughs, robots begin to enter real-world tasks and commercial scenarios, working like humans to create productivity. The Z curve denotes the stage where, driven by large-scale real-world scenario data, intelligent capabilities undergo a qualitative leap from quantitative accumulation, entering a broader phase of widespread application and adoption.
Zhiyuan's founder, Chairman, and CEO, Deng Taihua, stated in a keynote speech that 2026 marks the inaugural year of the "deployment state." Embodied AI is formally transitioning from a "development state" to a "deployment state," moving from "being able to move" to "knowing how to work." When robots can perform tasks autonomously and independently create value, they become genuine productive forces in the physical AI world. The value of this industry will grow as robots' working capabilities improve, deployment scenarios continuously diversify, and the scale of deployment steadily increases.
Deng Taihua emphasized that Zhiyuan's goal is not merely to create robots with excellent physical forms but to transform them into advanced productivity units that can be replicated across industries, scaled, and deployed in all scenarios.
In a subsequent presentation, Zhiyuan's co-founder, President, and CTO, Peng Zhihui, comprehensively analyzed the company's "One Body, Three Intelligences" technological evolution roadmap. He pointed out that the simultaneous convergence of three key factors—large model intelligence, body reliability, and the data flywheel—heralds the inflection point for embodied AI.
Currently, Zhiyuan's full range of products has achieved commercial deployment, delivering seven standardized productivity solutions with quantifiable value.
During the summit, nine guests, including Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Chief Executive John Lee and Deng Taihua, jointly took the stage to officially launch the "Hong Kong Embodied AI Industry Co-creation Plan."
This plan focuses on application scenarios, innovation and entrepreneurship, industry-academia-research collaboration, talent cultivation, and international cooperation. It aims to drive Hong Kong's embodied AI industry toward achieving "single, ten, hundred, thousand, ten-thousand" targets over the next five years. These include establishing Zhiyuan's international R&D headquarters in Hong Kong, founding several joint industry-research laboratories, nurturing dozens of embodied AI innovation enterprises, and developing hundreds of industry partners. The plan further seeks to foster synergistic development across the industry chain, application scenarios, and innovative forces.
Regarding application scenarios, representatives from multiple partners jointly introduced the "Hong Kong Embodied AI Productivity Application Co-creation Plan," showcasing the collaborative potential of embodied AI in commercial services, public services, and robotic application services.
In terms of industry-academia-research collaboration, the summit initiated a "Greater Bay Area Industry-Academia-Research Ecosystem Launch Ceremony" to explore and advance cooperation opportunities for embodied AI in scientific research innovation, talent cultivation, and industrial transformation.
Focusing on innovation, entrepreneurship, and industrial synergy, Sequoia Capital China founding and managing partner Neil Shen, and Hillhouse Capital founding partner and COO Ma Cuiwei, among others, launched the "Hong Kong Embodied AI Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Plan" to support the incubation of talent and projects in Hong Kong's embodied AI innovation and entrepreneurship sector.
Additionally, the summit featured two thematic roundtable forums. Discussions centered on "The Physical AI Era: Thoughts and Breakthroughs of Emerging Tech Forces" and "Hong Kong Empowerment, Global Leadership: Jointly Building China's Technological Globalization Power."
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