Shanghai's MScape to Debut Domestic Embodied AI Brain Chips at WAIC 2026

MScape, formally Shanghai Lingjing Zhiyuan Technology, will use the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai to publicly debut a new generation of what it calls embodied intelligent brain hardware, the compute modules that sit inside humanoid robots, robotic arms, quadrupeds, and autonomous forklifts to handle perception and decision-making.

A Young Company With Institutional Backing

Founded in July 2025, MScape is incubated by the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and led by founder and chief executive Sun Bo. The company's core team draws on backgrounds from Huawei, ZTE, and other established Chinese technology firms. It raised more than RMB 100 million, approximately US$14 million, in an angel and angel-plus round led by Matrix Partners China, with strategic participation from Shanghai's Minhang district state-owned assets arm, giving it both capital and local government backing ahead of the WAIC showcase.

Two Product Lines, Two Strategies

MScape's product architecture splits its hardware into a decision-making "brain" and a motion-control "cerebellum," a division the company says allows real-time coordination between high-level reasoning and low-level physical control. Its Tongjing N series is built around Nvidia's Jetson AGX Orin platform, offering up to 200 trillion operations per second of compute, and is designed for manufacturers who want compatibility with the broader Nvidia robotics software ecosystem. Its Zhijing T series takes the opposite approach: a fully domestically developed stack with its own operating system, reaching a claimed 1,500 trillion operations per second of peak compute and up to 544 gigabytes of memory for running large models directly on the robot rather than in the cloud.

At WAIC, the company plans to show a robot autonomously handling a sequence of physical obstacles, including opening doors, crossing thresholds, navigating a 30-centimeter ditch, climbing stairs, and closing a door behind it, intended as a live demonstration of the perception and millisecond-level motion control its hardware is built to support. The company has also flagged what it describes as the world's first biomedical operating system built specifically for embodied AI, planned for an offline debut at the same event, though details on its clinical scope remain limited ahead of the showcase.

Where MScape Fits

MScape is one of more than 200 embodied AI companies expected to exhibit at WAIC 2026, part of a Shanghai robotics cluster that industry groups say now accounts for a large share of China's humanoid robot supply chain activity. Its dual-track strategy, offering both an Nvidia-compatible option and a fully domestic alternative, mirrors a broader pattern among Chinese robotics component suppliers positioning themselves to serve both export-oriented customers who want Nvidia compatibility and domestic customers operating under procurement rules that favor fully domestic technology stacks.

This report draws on company statements and industry reporting ahead of the WAIC showcase.

This article is for informational purposes only and reflects publicly available information at the time of writing.