Chips, AI, and embodied intelligence—Meituan has invested in leading companies across these industries

Source | Tech Planet

Author | Lin Jing

Currently, the most eye-catching company in the investment community is Unitree Technology. With its IPO application accepted, the wave of listings for embodied intelligence enterprises has officially begun.

The prospectus shows that Unitree Technology plans to raise 4.202 billion yuan, with external estimates suggesting an initial market capitalization of at least 42 billion yuan, expected to rise further. Notably, as the largest external shareholder, Meituan holds 9.65%—and entered very early, leading the B2 round when Unitree was valued at just 1 billion yuan, then participating again in the B3 round.

Over the past few years, Meituan has been quietly investing in hardcore technology companies. From chips and AI large models to embodied intelligence and autonomous driving, Meituan’s presence can be seen behind almost every leading company in these sectors.

Firmly investing early and accompanying 'Unitree Robotics' and others.

Unitree Robotics is just the tip of the iceberg in Meituan’s investment in the embodied intelligence sector. In this field alone, Meituan has invested in at least 16 companies, 10 of which have grown into 'unicorn companies' valued at over 1 billion US dollars.

Meituan tends to place bets starting from angel or Series A rounds, deeply participating in the entire process from a company's inception to its growth. Galaxy General, which has achieved scaled implementation in industrial, medical, and retail scenarios, currently has a valuation of 21 billion yuan, with Meituan as its angel investor, involved throughout the company’s development. After Galaxy General appeared on the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, its online popularity surged, making it one of the industry-recognized first-tier companies in the embodied intelligence sector, alongside Unitree Robotics.

StarSeaMap, ZiBianLiang, Sharpa, and other standout companies in embodied intelligence with valuations exceeding 10 billion yuan were also invested in by Meituan during their Series A rounds. To date, StarSeaMap has raised nearly 3 billion yuan in cumulative financing, breaking through the 10-billion-yuan valuation mark and becoming the fourth unicorn in embodied intelligence worth over 10 billion yuan.

Not only does Meituan enter early, but it also continues to increase its stake in subsequent funding rounds. Taking ZiBianLiang Robotics as an example, after leading the Series A round, Meituan followed up with additional investments in the A++ round and new financing rounds.

While internet investments are not uncommon, compared to other major internet companies’ 'spray-and-pray' investment strategies, Meituan’s investment in hardcore technologies is distinctive—showing early judgment, more focused and resolute commitment, and representing proactive rather than defensive strategy.

Take Unitree Robotics as an example: although companies like Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance also participated in Unitree Robotics' investment, their entry points were all in June 2025, when Unitree’s humanoid robot had already appeared on the Spring Festival Gala stage. Meanwhile, Meituan began investing in Unitree Robotics as early as the beginning of 2024, when Unitree was still relatively unknown in investment circles.

Another embodied intelligence robotics company, TaShi ZhiHang, completed two rounds of financing totaling $242 million within just five months of its establishment, before releasing any products. Meituan Strategic Investment entered as the lead investor in the angel+ round.

In stages where the technology is not yet fully mature and commercialization paths remain unclear, Meituan’s willingness to continuously invest at different phases of a company’s development reflects its 'long-termism' investment mentality—not pursuing short-term exits, but accompanying companies through the technology maturity curve, ultimately reaping strategic returns during the track’s explosive growth phase.

Behind this, Meituan also has a long-term and clear strategic consideration. As early as the first half of 2022, Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, publicly stated that although Meituan started with software, business development requires not only software but also hardware. This is an important reason why Meituan continues to invest heavily in the robotics field.

The business synergy between Meituan and some invested companies has already shown initial results: Invariant Robots can now autonomously complete training tests for picking up food, entering buildings, and using elevators in real open environments. Meituan and Galaxy General will jointly create the world's first humanoid robot smart pharmacy solution. Domain Innovation is collaborating with Meituan’s Little Elephant business to conduct mapping and modeling for forward warehouses and is also helping Meituan merchants generate 3D effect displays. In Meituan's medicine warehouses in Guangzhou and Wuhan, 100 Libiao robots have already started sorting work.

Meituan's Hard Tech Landscape

It’s not just embodied intelligence; in hard tech fields such as chip semiconductors and AI large models, Meituan has also made deep investments, almost covering all major leading enterprises. Nowadays, behind those star companies active in the venture capital circle, there is almost always Meituan's presence.

In the upstream chip and computing power sectors of the AI industry chain, Meituan has multiple strategic moves. For instance, Moore Threads, a leading company in China’s GPU field, broke through a market value of 300 billion yuan on its first day of listing; Muxi Corporation has also performed remarkably, surpassing a market value of 280 billion yuan on its first day of listing.

Meituan is also paying attention to 'national team' level chip companies. As a core force in China’s communication chip field, Unisoc is another example where Meituan has participated, showcasing its deep investment in high-barrier, hard-tech tracks.

In the AI and large model fields, Meituan has made precise investments – in July 2023, within less than a month, Meituan completed investments in two leading companies: one being Zhipu AI, which explores commercialization, and the other being MoonShot, a rising star known for its outstanding technical capabilities.

Zhipu AI, one of the 'six rising tigers' in China’s large model sector, went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as the 'world's first large model stock' in January 2026, with its highest market value exceeding 320 billion Hong Kong dollars, surpassing established internet giants like JD.com and Kuaishou at one point.

MoonShot received investment from Meituan as the lead investor in its A1 round just three months after its establishment, making Meituan one of the earliest industrial capital investors in this unicorn startup.

Beyond large models, Meituan's investment map covers even broader AI subfields – including AIGC 3D, video agents, and AI creative production. The integration of these AI capabilities is expected to bring multi-dimensional value to Meituan's local life services: AIGC 3D technology can empower virtual try-ons and product 3D modeling, enhancing user shopping experiences; video agents can facilitate short video content generation and intelligent editing, lowering the threshold for merchant content creation; AI creative production can inspire personalized user expression, strengthening platform interactivity.

In the autonomous driving and smart enterprise sectors, Meituan is the largest external shareholder of Li Auto and has also invested in prominent companies in the intelligent driving field such as Hesai Group, Jushi Intelligence, and Qingzhou Zhixing. These companies cover the full spectrum of technological chains from perception hardware to decision-making algorithms, aligning closely with Meituan's strategic needs for unmanned delivery and automated delivery vehicles.

From a timeline perspective, 2021 marked a critical turning point in Meituan's investment strategy. In that year, Meituan's strategy shifted from 'Food+Platform' to 'Retail+Technology,' after which its investments in hard tech have steadily increased, with growing intensity in its layout. While much of the public attention on Meituan remains focused on the intense food delivery subsidy wars, it has already built a complete 'technology map.'

With comprehensive coverage of chips, large models, and embodied intelligence, Meituan’s investment portfolio nearly encompasses half of China’s AI landscape. The public often sees Meituan as merely a 'food delivery company,' but its other side is that of a 'hidden talent scout' deeply engaged in hard technology and supporting the growth of leading tech enterprises.

Building deeper competitive advantages

As the technologies of these invested companies (drones, unmanned vehicles, embodied intelligence, large models) gradually integrate deeply with Meituan’s operations, we may see a completely different Meituan — an entirely new entity centered on 'Physical AI,' evolving from a 'food delivery platform' into a 'technology-driven retail platform.'

Meituan's latest Q4 and full-year 2025 financial results show that in the food delivery sector, Meituan maintained a stable market share of over 60% in GTV while incurring significantly lower losses than its competitors. In the technology sector, Meituan’s R&D investment hit a new high, increasing by 23% year-over-year to reach 26 billion yuan, continuously pushing the application of AI technologies in the physical world.

These funds are primarily allocated to two areas: first, Meituan continues to invest in logistics-related technologies including drones and unmanned vehicles. By the end of 2025, Meituan’s drones have launched 70 routes across multiple domestic and international cities, completing over 780,000 orders cumulatively.

More importantly, these technologies have been integrated into daily life, addressing fragmented yet real challenges. For instance, Meituan’s drones opened a dedicated route for 'elderly meal delivery' in Tingjiao Village, Hong Kong, reducing the original 1.5-hour cross-sea and mountain delivery time to just 10 minutes. In cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Suzhou, Meituan drones have established regular low-altitude medical delivery routes for transporting test samples, emergency supplies, and special medications.

On the other hand, Meituan leverages its years of accumulated service scenarios and data advantages in the physical world to enhance user experience through AI technology innovation, helping every merchant use their own AI assistant.

On the user side, Meituan introduced the AI assistants 'Xiao Mei' and 'Xiao Tuan,' based on its self-developed multimodal LongCat series large language model and open-source models, enabling AI technology to be applied in real consumer scenarios. Data shows that during the Spring Festival holiday, hundreds of millions of users utilized 'Xiao Tuan' to plan dining, entertainment, and shopping activities. 'Xiao Tuan' verified 700 million merchant details nationwide and refined them using 1.3 billion genuine user reviews, boosting offline consumption.

For merchants, Meituan continues to iterate a series of AI tools, providing personalized intelligent services. To date, more than 3.4 million merchants have adopted Meituan's AI business management assistant, effectively reducing operational costs.

There are millions of small and medium-sized businesses in the country, which lack both technical capabilities and financial strength. If AI can enable a small street shop to have its own digital operations assistant, Meituan's B-end ecosystem will truly complete the leap from 'connection' to 'conversion'.

On March 26, during Meituan’s earnings call, CEO Wang Xing stated that Meituan would not blindly pursue becoming a 'Token factory,' but instead views AI as a strategic opportunity to improve, strengthen, and even completely transform its core business of local services.

Wang Xing also used a specific dining scenario to concretely illustrate AI empowerment: 'I work in Wangjing, my friend is in Zhongguancun, and we plan to have lunch together, but we only have two hours. We need to find a Sichuan restaurant located midway, with good taste and convenient parking. To meet this common demand, AI needs to master map information, POI data, and real-time supply information from restaurants; otherwise, it will be difficult to meet users’ true needs.'

What the AI assistant 'Xiaotuan' does for users is extract valuable information from online reviews based on massive amounts of physical world data, and infer answers that meet personalized user demands, improving the efficiency of consumer decision-making.

As the previously hidden investment landscape of hard tech comes to light, Meituan’s strategy is gradually becoming clear: short-term competition will not overshadow long-term strategy. By increasing investment in technology and building an AI infrastructure for the physical world, Meituan is constructing a deeper moat — a future-oriented AI entry point for local life services.

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