On the morning of May 27, 2026, the signing ceremony for the joint laboratory between SLAI and X Square Robot was grandly held at the institute. The two parties formally signed a cooperation agreement to jointly establish a laboratory focused on frontier research in embodied intelligence. The collaboration aims to create a two-way channel connecting university-based scientific innovation with industrial deployment and to support the high-quality development of the embodied intelligence industry through a deeply integrated industry–academia–research model.

The ceremony was chaired by Professor Li Hongsheng, Assistant Dean of SLAI, Director of the Joint Laboratory Management Committee, and Deputy Director of the Center for Embodied Intelligence and Computer Vision. Wang Qian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of X Square Robot, Wang Hao, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Yang Qian, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, and Pang Hao, Co-founder and Chief Engineer, among others, attended the ceremony.

Professor Ouyang Wanli, Deputy Dean of SLAI and Director of the Center for AI for Science and Engineering, Professor Zheng Weishi, Deputy Dean of SLAI and member of the Joint Laboratory Management Committee, Professor Tan Ping, Director of the Center for Embodied Intelligence and Computer Vision and member of the Joint Laboratory Management Committee, as well as faculty and student representatives from the Institute, witnessed the signing ceremony.

On behalf of SLAI, Professor Ouyang Wanli delivered opening remarks and provided a profound elaboration on the strategic positioning and innovative mechanisms of this university–industry collaboration. He noted that embodied intelligence is currently at a critical juncture where technological breakthroughs and industrial applications are converging at an accelerating pace, and that traditional university–industry collaboration models are increasingly unable to meet the demands of rapid industry development. Since its establishment, SLAI has regarded bridging the "last mile" between research and industry as one of its core missions, and the launch of the Joint Laboratory represents a systematic effort to deepen university–industry collaboration.

He emphasized that SLAI's educational philosophy is built around its "3I" talent development model—International, Interdisciplinary, and Industrial. The Institute is committed to conducting research that addresses real and significant challenges faced by industry, rather than focusing solely on academic publication. He expressed the hope that both parties would concentrate on more consequential and breakthrough-oriented research questions in the future and, through a mutually embedded training model, enable jointly trained talent to grow by solving real-world problems, injecting new momentum into both the AI industry and Shenzhen–Hong Kong collaboration.

In his address, Wang Qian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of X Square Robot, stated that China's 15th Five-Year Plan places artificial intelligence and robotics among its strategic priorities and emphasizes accelerating the deployment of intelligent robots in real-world applications. Along the long and challenging path of embodied intelligence research, X Square Robot has remained at the forefront of industry development, leveraging its integrated strengths in foundation models, data, hardware systems, application scenarios, and engineering capabilities to closely connect fundamental research with real-world needs.

He noted that the partnership with SLAI carries long-term strategic significance. The value of the Joint Laboratory lies not only in generating high-level research outcomes, but also in building a future-oriented research and talent development platform. Such a platform will enable more young researchers to tackle real problems, accumulate original capabilities through sustained exploration, and produce a new generation of impactful, original, and industry-relevant innovations that will contribute to the long-term development of the embodied intelligence sector.

Wang Hao, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of X Square Robot, shared insights regarding the directions of technical cooperation and exploration between the two sides. He noted that the partnership is built on a strong foundation, highlighting SLAI's substantial talent pool and outstanding research capabilities, which position its research teams to effectively address industry pain points and practical R&D challenges.

X Square Robot will leverage its own strengths to provide data platforms, computing resources, and real-world application scenarios, solidifying the software and hardware support for the laboratory's research work. The Joint Laboratory will focus on embodied intelligence as its core research direction and will prioritize breakthroughs in key technological challenges, including data efficiency, foundation model architectures, and the integration of large AI models with traditional robotic technologies. He further emphasized that the embodied intelligence industry is currently entering a golden era of innovation and development. Both parties will work together to seize this opportunity, tackle fundamental challenges in embodied intelligence from the ground up, and accelerate progress toward artificial general intelligence.

In the presence of all guests, Professor Li Hongsheng, representing SLAI, and Wang Hao, representing X Square Robot, formally signed the Joint Laboratory cooperation agreement.

Professor Ouyang Wanli and Wang Qian served as witnesses to the signing ceremony. This marks the official implementation and full launch of the deep strategic cooperation between the two sides. Following the ceremony, leaders, guests, faculty members, and student representatives gathered for a group photograph to commemorate this important milestone in scientific and technological collaboration.

About X Square Robot

X Square Robot is a pioneer in China to focus on "general-purpose embodied AI large models" while strictly adhering to a fully end-to-end architecture. Centered on real-world data, the company creates general-purpose robots equipped with fine manipulation capabilities. Within its self-developed "Great Wall" series, WALL-A achieves multimodal information fusion and end-to-end mapping, featuring autonomous perception, reasoning, long-horizon decision-making, world-model capabilities, and high-precision execution of complex tasks, with performance that ranks among the world's leading systems across multiple dimensions. The company has also open-sourced WALL-OSS and its associated training code for developers, enabling rapid fine-tuning and practical deployment. Newly launched WALL-B, the world’s first embodied foundation model built on the World Unified Model (WUM), represents a landmark shift from VLA to native multimodal fusion design.X Square Robot remains committed to full-stack in-house development and has launched products including Quantum-1 Pro, Quantum-2, and a dexterous five-finger robotic hand. The company is also the only enterprise in China to have received strategic investments from ByteDance, Meituan, Alibaba, and Xiaomi, firmly positioning it among the leading players in the domestic embodied intelligence industry.