When Will Embodied AI Have Its ChatGPT Moment?

At the 2026 Inclusion · Bund Conference, the question on everyone's lips was: when will embodied intelligence have its ChatGPT moment? Industry leaders, investors, and young entrepreneurs gathered to dissect the hype, the hurdles, and the horizon.

The Bubble Debate: Pre-Dawn or Overheated?

With a surge of capital and startups, talk of a bubble is inevitable. But many at the conference see it differently. "The bubble feeling comes from a mismatch between where the industry is and where valuations are," said Jia Peng, CEO of Zhijian Dynamics. He believes embodied intelligence could eventually dwarf the mobile phone or auto industries, but right now, it's still pre-dawn.

Xiao Wanggang, founder of Daxiao Robotics, agrees. "We're in the pre-dawn phase," he said, noting that this year's shift to ego data and world models has started to show signs of a scaling law. Still, the pieces—data, components, models, bodies, and scenarios—remain scattered.

The ChatGPT Moment: Not If, But When

So when will that breakthrough arrive? Han Zheng, CEO of Sudo Technology, compares embodied AI to large language models circa 2018-2019. "The key frameworks are there, but integrating them into a reliable, commercial system is the big challenge," he said.

Jia Peng is less fond of the term 'embodied ChatGPT.' "In the physical world, reliability demands are far higher," he explained. He estimates three to five years for real productivity, with GPU computing power—especially on the edge—as the biggest bottleneck. Xiao Wanggang, however, pins the bottleneck on data. "If we need to retrain for every new task, we can't scale," he said. He's hopeful that zero-shot capabilities from general models could accelerate progress.

Young Entrepreneurs: World Models and Global Competition

The forum also spotlighted entrepreneurs born in the 90s and 00s. Li Yiming, founder of Licheng Intelligent, warned that every embodied AI company now claims to be a world model company. "The key is what specific problems you solve," he said.

Ding Ning of Natural Will believes the GPT-3 moment for embodied AI has already arrived—just unnoticed. "After 2025, large models solved fundamental issues, but operating in the physical world remains," he said. He feels anxious about overseas competitors with massive computing resources, but sees China's edge in hardware and supply chains. "High-precision data needs better sensors, and that can only be produced in Shenzhen right now."

Chen Boyuan, a 22-year-old founder of Nix Matrix Technology, emphasizes that physical AI must understand causality. "Edge cases are not the tail; they're the norm," he said. He argues that physical AI is a complex systems engineering project, not something a few geniuses can crack. "Respect first principles, validate small, scale big—that's how we drive innovation."

Key Points

Bubble or not? Industry leaders say the 'bubble' reflects a stage-valuation mismatch, not a dead end.
ChatGPT moment: Still years away; system integration, computing power, and data are the main bottlenecks.
Young entrepreneurs: Betting on world models, physical world understanding, and China's hardware supply chain.
Global race: Anxiety over overseas computing power, but opportunities in high-precision data and sensors.

When Will Embodied AI Have Its ChatGPT Moment?