Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar and Zhiyuan meet in Hangzhou, discuss embodied AI business in Malaysia

Zhiyuan Innovation (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd. announced on September 28, 2026, that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim met in Hangzhou on September 23 with the company's founder, chairman and CEO Deng Taihua and others. The talks covered the development of embodied intelligence technology, industrial cooperation and an ecosystem for talent development, the company said. Zhiyuan also presented its projects in Malaysia with I-Berhad, Mr. Robot and Genting Group.

The projects with I-Berhad, Mr. Robot and Genting Group were presented across distinct settings — experience centers, retail, content creation and services — suggesting that Zhiyuan's overseas expansion is focused more on transferring operating models than on selling robots alone. The announcement of talks with the Malaysian government also connects the business to industrial policy and talent development, rather than limiting it to private-sector projects.

What is new in this announcement is that Zhiyuan described its overseas expansion through several settings — experience centers, retail, content creation and robot services — in talks with Malaysia's top government official, rather than presenting it as sales alone. In particular, “AI World” and “AI Living” with I-Berhad, retail with Mr. Robot, and content creation and services with Genting Group point to expansion that includes operating scenarios as well as deploying hardware. At the same time, this extends the company's previously emphasized approach of putting mass-produced robots to work in the real world. In related stories, we reported that since September 9, Zhiyuan had announced the deployment of physical robots in competitions at the World Humanoid Robot Games, GE-Act 2.0, the AGILE2.0 integrated sensing-and-control model, campus recruitment and the joint establishment of industry-academia collaboration bases. Those developments pointed to efforts to strengthen research results, talent and data infrastructure. The latest meeting, by contrast, is more directly about connecting those efforts to overseas deployments. Zhiyuan Innovation explains Lingxi X2's gold medal win, clearing all obstacles autonomously in the 100-meter hurdles and Zhiyuan Innovation unveils GE-Act 2.0, tests real-robot zero-shot capability gap with 300 versus 30,000 hours highlighted hardware performance and learning capabilities. The latest announcement appears to mark a step toward applying those capabilities in specific settings in Malaysia. From an industry perspective, the focus is not only competition over robot performance, but also deployment design that brings together experience centers, commercial facilities, retail, content production and service operations. This requires not only hardware supply but also software, operating procedures and the capacity of venues to accommodate demonstrations, customer service and operations. Given Prime Minister Anwar's remark at the meeting that “AI serves all humanity,” Malaysia appears to be seeking deployments linked to domestic industry and talent development, rather than one-off equipment exports. Details not yet established include the number of robots in each project, how they will operate, the investment scale and when operations will begin; the announcement did not provide them.

According to Zhiyuan, it is jointly developing “AI World,” its first overseas AI robot experience center, and the “AI Living” project with I-Berhad. It said it is working with Mr. Robot on a retail deployment project and with Genting Group on projects involving content creation and robot services. At the meeting, the company said that in just over three years since its founding, it had become the embodied intelligence company with the “largest global shipment volume,” “largest revenue scale” and “fastest development pace.” It also outlined plans to advance its full range of products toward deployment at scale, combining robot hardware, movement, interaction and task capabilities around its “three-intelligence integration” full-stack architecture.