XPeng Inc. said it commissioned humanoid robot production lines in Guangzhou on September 8, 2026, and that an IRON unit walked off the line after assembly. The NYSE- and Hong Kong-listed company framed the moment as the jump from prototypes to line manufacturing. Chairman and chief executive He Xiaopeng said the lines were built without a playbook and called the step small next to the category XPENG wants to manufacture at scale.

The company said more than 80 percent of core processes on the new line are automated and that the quality system is borrowed from its automotive plants. IRON is described as a general-purpose humanoid with a fully enclosed flexible lattice shell, 76 degrees of freedom across the body, and 21 in each hand. Three Turing AI chips are specified at up to 2,250 TOPS so a physical-AI foundation model can run on the robot without remote operation. He placed a staff badge on an IRON unit during the ceremony, which the release treats as a symbolic hire.

XPENG said robots are scheduled to enter mass production by the end of 2026, first in its own stores and campuses, with official market launch and delivery in China and overseas planned for 2027. The same release said the robotics unit raised more than $900 million on August 24 at a post-money valuation above $6.3 billion. That earlier financing is context, not today’s news, but it is the capital sitting behind the line that just started.

Decoded Take

Walking off a line is a manufacturing claim, not a fleet. The hard part is yield, service, and a job an IRON can repeat without a wrangler. XPENG is using car-plant discipline and a captive first customer (its stores) to hide that gap for a few quarters. If late-2026 volume slips, or if the first campus robots need teleop the chips were supposed to replace, the $6.3 billion robotics story becomes another EV-adjacent option. Watch a disclosed unit count, an unscripted task video from a store floor, and whether 2027 overseas delivery comes with a safety regulator that treats a 76-DOF humanoid as a vehicle, a tool, or something new.