ACE Robotics Chairman Wang Xiaogang: Embodied AI Is Expected to Experience Its "ChatGPT Moment" by the End of 2027

According to Reuters as cited by Decrypt, Wang Xiaogang, chairman of Chinese robotics startup ACE Robotics, stated that with advances in world models and improved capabilities for collecting real-world environment data, embodied AI is poised to experience a "ChatGPT moment" similar to that of large language models by the end of 2027. Wang pointed out that one of the main bottlenecks hindering the large-scale commercialization of robots remains a shortage of real-world training data. Across the industry, cumulative data over the past few years amounts to approximately 100,000 hours—far from enough to train embodied foundation models. ACE Robotics plans to collect tens of millions of hours of real-world environment data over the next two years and aims to deploy the corresponding technology to 1,000 stores within the coming year. Established in July 2025, ACE Robotics focuses on developing AI models for humanoid robots. With support from Ant Group and SenseTime, the company secured over $100 million in funding in the first half of 2026 and intends to fast-track its IPO as soon as conditions allow.