He Xiaopeng
He Xiaopeng (何小鹏) is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of XPeng Inc. (NYSE: XPEV), a Chinese electric vehicle and autonomous driving company headquartered in Guangzhou, China. Before founding XPeng, he co-founded UCWeb, developer of UC Browser, which was acquired by Alibaba Group in 2014 for approximately $1.9 billion. He is best known for steering XPeng's strategic pivot toward end-to-end AI-driven autonomous driving and for championing a 'Physical AI' vision that spans smart EVs, robotaxis, flying cars, and humanoid robots, and in June 2026 he personally assumed the CEO role of XPeng's robotics unit to accelerate mass production of the IRON humanoid robot.
“Today's step is small, but XPENG is building the production lines for an entirely new product category”
“LC is even crazier than me. He always tells me he wants to 'create humans,' not robots... His vector of thinking was fairly aligned with mine. He was one of the few people I selected within my thinking framework.”
Source→“I think its technical capability is decent, but I think it will be very difficult to globalize. In the time it's taken, their technology is inherently a higher-level stitched monster. It's very difficult to achieve extreme generalization in AI.”
Source→“Yu Kai [CEO of Horizon] and I have a very good relationship. I think he's walking a very interesting, very promising, but perhaps very challenging road. It depends on whether the companies chasing automotive and robot AI are increasing or decreasing.”
Source→“Yesterday I went to Li Bin's place and looked at the ES9. I think NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto (蔚小理) in the large SUV segment will all offer different perspectives and insights this time.”
Source→“I may have a bigger risk appetite. We made a massive bet. We stopped the entire previous system. That system had cost us several tens of billions of RMB.”
Source→“I think in Tesla's Silicon Valley, it's easier to find more generalist candidates. I think in most countries, cities, or industries, it's very difficult.”
Source→“The amount of tokens usable by digital AI is far less than the tokens that physical world AI itself needs to use. But this is actually meaningless, because it's not using humans — it's using AI to satisfy its own needs.”
Source→“LC is even crazier than me. He always tells me he wants to 'create humans,' not robots. The vast majority of people think of a robot as a commercial product, but I think he considered the robot's ultimate participation in society, in the universe, and its emotional connection with each of us.”
Source→“Today I went to Li Auto's booth to look at the new L9 — it's also a very good car, I believe.”
Source→AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.