Day: November 17, 2025

• Chinese Tesla rival Xpeng said it plans to start mass production of its robot, called Iron, next year.
• The EV startup’s CEO said Xpeng built Iron to be so “human-like” that people are comfortable hugging it.
• Tesla is also set to begin production of its Optimus robot in 2026.

A Chinese Tesla rival is betting on huggability to take on Elon Musk’s Optimus robot.

EV startup Xpeng unveiled the latest version of its humanoid robot, called Iron, earlier this month, and CEO He Xiaopeng said the company wanted its bipedal bots to be “highly human-like.”

In an earnings call on Monday, he told analysts that Xpeng had found adding fake muscles and “bionic skin” to Iron made people more comfortable touching and even hugging the robot.

“This is very exciting because traditional robots really were not that attractive and appealing for human beings to give them a hug,” said Xiaopeng.

Unlike many rival humanoid robots, Iron has a distinctly human-like physique, with Xpeng showcasing male and female variants. Users will be able to customize the robot with different body types, the company said.

In one demo at the unveiling, Xpeng employees even cut into the robot’s flexible “skin” to demonstrate that there was no one inside.

Speaking to analysts on Monday, Xiaopeng said Xpeng aims to sell 1 million Iron robots a year by 2030, with mass production set to begin by the end of 2026.

The auto executive, who predicted that the market for humanoid robots would ultimately be larger than the car market, added that he expects humanoid robots to be initially used in retail and as tour guides. Xpeng plans to put Iron to work in its stores next year, he said.

The production ramp-up is the latest sign that Tesla’s biggest robotics rival could come from China.

Musk’s automaker is preparing to begin mass production of its own humanoid robot, Optimus, by the end of 2026. Musk has predicted Optimus could be the biggest product ever, and Tesla’s AI chief told employees that 2026 will be the “hardest year” of their lives.

Founded in 2014, Xpeng has been one of the most successful startups to battle Tesla for a piece of China’s red-hot EV market.

The Guangzhou-based company has smashed sales records this year and is close to becoming profitable.

Xpeng executives said on Monday the EV startup will launch seven new vehicles next year, including three robotaxi models, and the company also plans to begin mass production of its $280,000 flying car in 2026.

• OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo says the company needs to keep hyperscaling compute.
• She said the bigger risk to OpenAI “would be to not lean into compute.”
• Simo said compute scarcity means OpenAI has to limit the availability of features like ChatGPT Pulse.

OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo said being cautious is actually the bigger risk to the AI company.

“I know these deals look risky on the outside, but on the inside, what’s much riskier would be to not lean into compute,” Simo told Wired in an interview published on Monday.

Other hyperscalers have also said they view the bigger risk as not building up their scale fast enough. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who once worked alongside Simo at Facebook, said the bigger risk than the AI bubble is to play it safe.

“If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously,” he said in September. “But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.”

Capex spending by AI and leading tech companies is so massive that some economists say it is boosting the overall economy. The sheer size of those investments has unnerved some on Wall Street who are worried about a bubble akin to the Dot-Com era.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently clarified that the company isn’t looking for a bailout if its data center investments go belly up, a concern that was sparked by OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, who spoke of a “government backstop” for data center spending.

“If we screw up and can’t fix it, we should fail, and other companies will continue on doing good work and servicing customers,” Altman wrote on X. “That’s how capitalism works and the ecosystem and economy would be fine. We plan to be a wildly successful company, but if we get it wrong, that’s on us.”

In announcing Simo’s appointment, Altman said he would increase his focus on research and compute. Simo is responsible for other questions, including how to integrate ads into ChatGPT.

Simo wants to make ChatGPT Pulse available to all users

Simo, who left Instacart to join the AI startup in May, said she is aware that from the outside, there is concern about OpenAI’s slew of hyperscaling deals that have the company on the hook for $1.4 trillion in data center commitments over the next 8 years despite losing billions every year. But inside OpenAI, she said, compute is in such demand that there’s no other choice.

“When you look at how constrained we are internally and how much more we could do if we had more GPUs, it’s very clearly the right decision,” she said. “We have a pipeline of products that are going to make massive use of compute.”

As an example, Simo said she would like to make Pulse, a Pro feature inside ChatGPT that personalizes updates based on chats, feedback, and connected apps like a calendar, available to all users. Right now, there simply isn’t enough compute available to do so.

“I’m giving you one example, but there’s ten of those,” she said.