Spirit AI is building around the data problem

Spirit AI has signed a strategic partnership with Bosch China covering robot data collection, model training, industrial scenario deployment, and component supply.

Spirit AI, also known as Qianxun Intelligence, is a Chinese embodied-intelligence company founded in early 2024, developing humanoid robots and the foundation models that control them. Han Fengtao, its CEO, published a 10,000-word essay in June 2023 while still CTO at Rokae Robotics, arguing that robots had failed commercially because they lacked intelligence rather than capable hardware, and that large models were the fix. He left Rokae months later to start Spirit AI.

Han’s prior record gives Spirit AI a more industrial starting point than many model-first robotics companies. At Rokae, he helped lead the development and delivery of nearly 20,000 robot units across nearly 100 industrial and collaborative robot models. His co-founder and Chief Scientist, Gao Yang, studied at UC Berkeley and is now an assistant professor at Tsinghua’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences.

Under the Bosch agreement, Bosch China will provide access to factory and logistics environments in China over two years for data collection and model training, while supplying actuators and sensors to support product development, engineering validation, and mass-production preparation.

Spirit AI’s Moz humanoid robot, known as Xiao Mo, began operating on CATL’s Zhongzhou Base battery PACK production line in December 2025, in what CATL described as the world’s first large-scale humanoid robot application in new energy battery pack production. Reported operating metrics included a connection success rate above 99%, cycle times comparable to skilled workers, and daily workload nearly three times higher than manual labor.

In January 2026, Spirit AI’s Spirit v1.5 foundation model ranked first on the RoboChallenge Table30 benchmark with a task success rate of 50.33%, outperforming Physical Intelligence’s pi0.5 model. Spirit AI also open-sourced the model and related resources.

Spirit AI’s reported total financing now exceeds RMB 4 billion, about $585 million, after a fast sequence of funding rounds. Two February rounds totaled nearly RMB 2 billion, about $290 million, and an April round added a further RMB 1 billion, about $145 million, co-led by Shunwei Capital and YF Capital. Earlier February reports placed the company’s valuation above RMB 10 billion. Other investors reported across its financing history include JD.com and Prosperity7 Ventures.

(Using the May 6, 2026 rate of 1 RMB ≈ $0.146)

Spirit AI enters the Bosch agreement with a live production-line reference at CATL and a benchmarked open-source foundation model already on record. The partnership adds structured industrial data at scale, component supply, and engineering validation support, covering the layer between a working robot and one ready for mass production. Han has said broad commercialisation remains a longer path, with medium-scale company ambitions aimed closer to the end of the decade.