He Xiaopeng: XPeng in Talks With More Automakers on Tech and Chips

XPeng Group chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng says the company is negotiating technology and chip cooperation with additional carmakers — and with companies outside the auto industry — and that some of it could be announced within weeks.

He was speaking to Yicai (第一财经) on the evening of 17 September 2026, responding to questions about XPeng's technical cooperation with other automakers.

About the clip: the video attached to the original post runs 2.5 seconds and is silent — it is Yicai / Shanghai Media Group branding, not interview footage. The English captions added here translate the on-screen branding and restate the post's headline. There is no speech in the source clip to translate.

What He Xiaopeng said

As reported by Yicai reporter Huang Lin (黄琳), translated from Chinese:

"There is a great deal that German automakers and German industrial companies can teach us, and it deserves serious study. XPeng is currently talking with Volkswagen about further cooperation, and is also in talks with more automakers — and non-automakers — about cooperation in technology, chips and other areas. We will announce when the time is right. Next month, at the Paris Motor Show, we may announce several new examples of XPeng's overseas cooperation — and we may see them land in the fourth quarter."

Three things stand out.

1. "German automakers" is the tell

The Volkswagen Group took a 4.99% stake in XPeng for around US$700 million, announced in July 2023 and completed that December — the opening of what both companies have since described as a long-term technology partnership rather than a passive investment.

That partnership produced the joint China Main Platform (CMP) and a co-developed zonal electrical/electronic architecture for Volkswagen-branded EVs built for China, with the first co-developed model targeted for 2026. He is now saying the conversation has moved past that first programme: "more cooperation" with Volkswagen, in his words.

2. Paris, then the fourth quarter

The Paris Motor Show runs in October 2026, and XPeng has said its G9L flagship SUV will be revealed there on 12 October. He is linking that event to overseas cooperation announcements — a different thing from product launches.

That pairing is what to watch: a flagship reveal in Europe, plus "several new examples" of cooperation outside China, and a stated expectation that some of it lands commercially in the fourth quarter of 2026. (We covered the G9L's full pricing and specification stack here.)

3. Technology and chips as an export product

"Technology, chips and other areas" is the part with the widest implications. XPeng builds its own Turing AI chip — deployed in the G9L in one-, two- and three-chip configurations rated at 750, 1,500 and 2,250 TOPS — and its own VLA (vision-language-action) autonomous-driving stack, which it now ships in a distilled "Lite" form on some G9L Max variants.

He has consistently framed both as things XPeng is willing to sell on, not merely use itself. Just as notably, he says the counterparties include non-automakers — which points at XPeng's humanoid robotics and physical-AI work (IRON) as the obvious candidate for chip-and-stack licensing outside the car business entirely.

For a company that has spent two years arguing its in-house silicon and its end-to-end driving model are a durable cost and capability advantage, licensing them out is the natural way to amortise that spend.

What this is not

• These are talks, not deals. No counterparty beyond Volkswagen is named, and no terms, volumes or timelines are disclosed — "when the time is right" is explicitly open-ended.
• "Next month" and "the fourth quarter" are intentions, not commitments. He uses "may" for the Paris announcements.
• The video has no audio. Anyone expecting interview footage will be disappointed — the source clip is a branding sting.

Source: 第一财经日报 (Yicai / China Business News), Weibo — translated & adapted for XPENGTech.