On October 20, the 2026 Chery Global Innovation Conference opened at Chery's Global Technology Innovation Center in Wuhu under the theme "Change". Executive Vice President and CTO Gao Xinhua unveiled CheryMind, a vertical foundation model built for physical AI, together with the self-controlled Ziwei chip family — extending Chery's AI capability from the cockpit to the physical world at large.

Illustration of robotic assembly lines and data streams in a smart factory
From car production lines to robots, physical AI is leaving the cockpit

One Conference, Two Engines

CheryMind is positioned as the core engine of Chery's transformation into an "AI-driven company", while the Ziwei chips ship in C, S and M series, lifting compute, power and control respectively. According to Autohome and other outlets, the Ziwei C100 delivers 2,400 TOPS and is planned to go onboard in 2027. Chairman Yin Tongyue said Chery was among the earliest automakers to bet on AI, with more than 20 years of accumulated R&D.

From Cars to Every Industry

Chery's roadmap is explicit: reuse the general-purpose technologies of AI cars across adjacent domains — ① MoJia humanoid robots; ② Robotaxis; ③ eVTOL aircraft; ④ energy; ⑤ agricultural machinery. Under the "Yaoguang 2035" strategy, Yin joked that "Chery is less and less like a car company". An AI assistant dubbed "MoBao" was also released at the event.

An Adoption Ledger That Already Balances

Per D1EV, CheryMind is already used daily by around 60,000 employees across more than 200 business scenarios. Unlike demo-first models that peak on launch day, Chery runs its model through its own R&D-to-sales chain before externalizing it — in step with MIIT's emerging next-generation smart-manufacturing policy: the value of AI + manufacturing lies in real business scenarios, not benchmark scores.

Key numbers from the conference

· Ziwei C100 compute: 2,400 TOPS (onboard from 2027)

· Business scenarios covered: 200+

· Daily active employees: ~60,000

· Years of AI R&D at Chery: 20+

For manufacturers, the worth of a vertical model is measured by adoption and ROI, not rankings. NineZenith's Zenith-Act industry models take the same stance — grounding model capability in measurable business metrics, first inside the enterprise, then beyond it.

(Information synthesized from Shanghai Securities News, Eastmoney, Sina Finance, D1EV, Autohome and other public reports)