(Yicai) March 25 -- Shares of Dafeng Industry, a leading Chinese provider of equipment and solutions for big cultural and sports events, soared by their daily trading limit after the firm said it has joined with AgiBot Innovation Technology to develop and commercialize the use of humanoid robots in these sectors.

Dafeng [SHA: 603081] closed up 10 percent at CNY16.52 (USD2.28) a share in Shanghai today.

The pair will set up an 85:15 joint venture to develop multimodal artificial intelligence interactive models incorporating voice, vision, touch, and gestures, Zhejiang-based Dafeng announced on March 23. The goal is to create embodied AI products tailored for commercial use, including at art performances, sports events, and tourist attractions, it said.

Dafeng will provide application scenario access, data assets, and a localized deployment team for the JV, while AgiBot will lead the research and development on core technologies and build a product system. After the JV is formed, Dafeng will place an order worth at least CNY15 million (USD2.1 million) to support the R&D work.

The new venture will help Dafeng expand its cutting-edge smart application scenarios, reshape the cultural sector’s experiential learning model and service ecosystem, and hasten brand building and digital transformation, it noted.

Dafeng’s income from large cultural events accounted for about 81 percent of its total revenue in 2023. Its clients have included China Central Television's Chinese New Year Gala, the G20 Hangzhou Summit, the BRICS Xiamen Summit, and the Hangzhou Asian Games.  

AgiBot turned out its 1,000th embodied robot in January, with its latest humanoid robot, Expedition A2, now in mass production. The startup released Genie Operator-1, its first generalist embodied foundation model that enables robots to acquire learning capabilities, at the beginning of this month.

Editor: Futura Costaglione