Physix Frontier · News Briefing Card (enbrief · Nov 9, 2026)

PetroChina's Kunlun arm takes 60% of robotics JV with Unitree, Fanjie

KEY FACTS

  • The Beijing Municipal Market Supervision Administration disclosed that Kunlun Manufacturing and Kunlun Capital signed a joint venture agreement with Unitree Robotics and Fanjie Intelligence.
  • In the JV's equity structure, the Kunlun entities hold 60% combined, while Unitree and Fanjie each hold 20%.
  • The JV focuses on industrial embodied-intelligence robot solutions, with the Kunlun side holding absolute control.
  • Kunlun Capital previously participated in Unitree's STAR Market strategic placement with 136 million yuan.
  • Fanjie Intelligence was founded in April 2026, incubated by Qiao Hong's team at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and focuses on world models.

KEY DATA

60%Kunlun entities' stake in the JV
20%Unitree Robotics' stake
20%Fanjie Intelligence's stake
1.36亿元Kunlun Capital's investment in Unitree's strategic placement

PHYSIX OBSERVATION

PetroChina is using a 60% controlling stake to put hardware, models and acceptance standards into a single legal entity, aiming to control the right to define admission standards for station robots rather than simply doing R&D. But control only settles product definition; it does not solve field data accumulation. Whether the Unitree body plus the Fanjie model can run through a full winter and be written into procurement specifications is the real test.

Source: enbrief original report ↗