Former UBTECH co-CTO Liao Hongtao joins Tencent.

The reporter learned exclusively from informed sources that Liao Hongtao, former co-CTO of UBTECH, has joined Tencent's Futian Laboratory as head of embodied intelligence. Liao Hongtao's team has already launched recruitment for talent in the embodied intelligence field. According to public information, Futian Laboratory, whose full name is the "Guangdong Provincial Laboratory for Embodied Intelligence," is a provincial-level artificial intelligence laboratory established in Shenzhen, focusing on embodied intelligence for human living environments, and is jointly built by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Digital Economy Research Institute (IDEA) and Tencent. The laboratory was officially inaugurated on November 15, 2024, with Zhang Zhengyou, Tencent's Chief Scientist and Director of the Robotics X Laboratory, serving as the laboratory director, and Dr. Zhang Lei, Chair Scientist of the IDEA Research Institute, along with the core team of Robotics X, jointly participating in management and organization. The laboratory aims to achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies such as embodied intelligence perception, decision-making, and interaction, and to promote the development of home service robots and related technologies.