Chinese EV company Xpeng showed off its newest humanoid robot in Guangzhou on Nov. 5, 2025.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng
Guangzhou, CHINA — Chinese electric car company Xpeng plans to launch robotaxis next year after previously claiming it wouldn’t be a real business in the near future and took the wraps off of its latest humanoid robot model.
Xpeng’s technology push mirrors one of its key rivals Tesla, as the Guangzhou, China-headquartered company looks to position itself as more than just an electric car firm.
The automaker announced on Wednesday as part of its “AI Day” that it is launching three robotaxi models. The vehicles will use four of Xpeng’s self-developed “Turing” AI chips. Xpeng claims the chips represent the combined highest in-car computing power in the world, at 3,000 TOPS, an industry measure.
The semiconductors power Xpeng’s “vision-language-action (VLA)” model, now in its second iteration. This type of AI models take into account inputs like visual cues that can help with applications like driverless cars or robotics.
Alibaba announced Wednesday that it is partnering with Xpeng on robotaxis through the e-commerce company’s digital mapping subsidiary AutoNavi and Amaps app, which also includes a ride-hailing portal.
The Xpeng robotaxi includes an external display of speed and other information on the vehicle’s sun visors.
Xpeng said it plans to start testing robotaxis in Guangzhou and other Chinese cities next year.
Co-president Brian Gu told CNBC last week that robotaxis will “ultimately be a global phenomenon” but that it would take time to get there, especially given regulation. Back in April 2024, he cautioned that self-driving taxis wouldn’t become a significant business for at least five years.
During a group interview with reporters on Wednesday, Gu addressed his change in tone from last year toward robotaxis.
“The tech is happening faster than we anticipated,” Gu said.
He noted that the AI developments and the significant increase in computing power “give us the confidence we are near the inflection point” for robotaxis.
Xpeng’s strategy for robotaxis is to make two categories of cars: one for commercial self-driving shared vehicles, and another for fully autonomous personal cars that may be only shared among family members.
Xpeng’s robotaxi announcements come as Chinese players such as Pony.ai, WeRide and Baidu have ramped up global expansion plans after rolling out self-driving taxis to the public in parts of China. Tesla this year launched its long-awaited robotaxi program in parts of Texas.
Humanoid robot
Similar to Tesla’s push into humanoid robots, Xpeng on Wednesday announced its own version, the second-generation Iron robot. The Chinese company plans to begin mass production of the robots next year.
During a presentation on Wednesday, CEO He Xiaopeng downplayed the likelihood that the humanoids will soon be usable in households, and said it was too costly to use them in factories given the low price of labor in China. Instead, he said the robots will first be used as tour guides, sales assistants and office building guides, beginning in Xpeng facilities.
He said that he doesn’t know how many robots Xpeng will sell in the next 10 years, but it will be more than the number of cars.
The humanoid robot uses three of Xpeng’s Turing AI chips and a solid-state battery, with plans for customization options for aspects of the product like body shape and hair style.
Xiaopeng He, CEO of Xpeng, showed off the company’s plan for robotaxis at an event in Guangzhou, China, on Nov. 5, 2025.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng
Xpeng Co-President Gu said on Wednesday that the company has been developing some technology before Tesla but has not been as vocal in promoting it.
“What we are pursuing from a tech and product perspective, there are some similarities with Tesla…There are some areas that we probably started earlier than Tesla,” Gu said, referring to flying cars and humanoid robots.
Xpeng has developed a flying car product.
But Gu acknowledged that Tesla has done a better and more high-profile job at sharing its commercialization plans, which Xpeng has not done as much until today.
Neptune and OpenAI have collaborated on a metrics dashboard to help teams that are building foundation models. The companies will work “even more closely together” because of the acquisition, Neptune CEO Piotr Niedźwiedź said in a blog.
The startup will wind down its external services in the coming months, Niedźwiedź said. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“Neptune has built a fast, precise system that allows researchers to analyze complex training workflows,” OpenAI’s Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a statement. “We plan to iterate with them to integrate their tools deep into our training stack to expand our visibility into how models learn.”
OpenAI has acquired several companies this year.
It purchased a small interface startup called Software Applications Incorporated for an undisclosed sum in October, product development startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in September and Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for more than $6 billion in May.
Neptune had raised more than $18 million in funding from investors including Almaz Capital and TDJ Pitango Ventures, according to its website. Neptune’s deal with OpenAI is still subject to customary closing conditions.
“I am truly grateful to our customers, investors, co-founders, and colleagues who have made this journey possible,” Niedźwiedź said. “It was the ride of a lifetime already, yet still I believe this is only the beginning.”
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron said on Wednesday that it plans to stop selling memory to consumers to focus on meeting demand for high-powered artificial intelligence chips.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, Micron business chief, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
Micron’s announcement is the latest sign that the AI infrastructure boom is creating shortages for inputs like memory as a handful of companies commit to spend hundreds of billions in the next few years to build massive data centers. Memory, which is used by computers to store data for short periods of time, is facing a global shortage.
Micron shares are up about 175% this year, though they slipped 3% on Wednesday to $232.25.
AI chips, like the GPUs made by Nvidia and AdvancedMicro Devices, use large amounts of the most advanced memory. For example, the current-generation Nvidia GB200 chip has 192GB of memory per graphics processor. Google’s latest AI chip, the Ironwood TPU, needs 192GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Memory is also used in phones and computers, but with lower specs, and much lower quantities — many laptops only come with 16GB of memory. Micron’s Crucial brand sold memory on sticks that tinkerers could use to build their own PCs or upgrade their laptops. Crucial also sold solid-state hard drives.
Micron competes against SK Hynix and Samsung in the market for high-bandwidth memory, but it’s the only U.S.-based memory supplier. Analysts have said that SK Hynix is Nvidia’s primary memory supplier.
Micron supplies AMD, which says its AI chips use more memory than others, providing them a performance advantage for running AI. AMD’s current AI chip, the MI350, comes with 288GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Micron’s Crucial business was not broken out in company earnings. However, its cloud memory business unit showed 213% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.
Analysts at Goldman on Tuesday raised their price target on Micron’s stock to $205 from $180, though they maintained their hold recommendation. The analysts wrote in a note to clients that due to “continued pricing momentum” in memory, they “expect healthy upside to Street estimates” when Micron reports quarterly results in two weeks.
A Micron spokesperson declined to comment on whether the move would result in layoffs.
“Micron intends to reduce impact on team members due to this business decision through redeployment opportunities into existing open positions within the company,” the company said in its release.
Microsoft pushed back on a report Wednesday that the company lowered growth targets for artificial intelligence software sales after many of its salespeople missed those goals in the last fiscal year.
The company’s stock sank more than 2% on The Information report.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company has not lowered sales quotas or targets for its salespeople.
The sales lag occurred for Microsoft’s Foundry product, an Azure enterprise platform where companies can build and manage AI agents, according to The Information, which cited two salespeople in Azure’s cloud unit.
AI agents can carry out a series of actions for a user or organization autonomously.
Less than a fifth of salespeople in one U.S. Azure unit met the Foundry sales growth target of 50%, according to The Information.
In another unit, the quota was set to double Foundry sales, The Information reported. The quota was dropped to 50% after most salespeople didn’t meet it.
In a statement, the company said the news outlet inaccurately combined the concepts of growth and quotas.
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“Aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered, as we informed them prior to publication,” a Microsoft Spokesperson said.
The AI boom has presented opportunities for businesses to add efficiencies and streamline tasks, with the companies that build these agents touting the power of the tools to take on work and allow workers to do more.
OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, Amazon and others all have their own tools to create and manage these AI assistants.
But the adoption of these tools by traditional businesses hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.
The Information noted AI adoption struggles at private equity firm Carlyle last year, in which the tools wouldn’t reliably connect data from other places. The company later reduced how much it spent on the tools.