Buying guide
AEON vs XPeng IRON in 2026
Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.
Key differences
- AEON is at the pilot stage; XPeng IRON at the research stage.
| Attribute | ||
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Hexagon | XPeng Robotics |
| Form factor | humanoid | humanoid |
| Maturity | pilot | research |
| Autonomy | — | — |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | internal-onlyenterprise |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain |
|
|
| Verified deployments | 1BMW Group | 1Baosteel Group |
| Privacy practices | — | — |
| Sources on file | 5 | 6 |
Editorial summaries
AEON
Hexagon's AEON is an industrial humanoid robot built for factory work such as assembly lines and high-voltage EV-battery manufacturing, developed with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the Swiss actuator maker maxon. It carries 22 sensors and self-swapping batteries (about 23 seconds) for around-the-clock operation, with a walking speed near 2.5 meters per second. DEPLOY records it at pilot maturity with one verified deployment, at BMW Group Plant Leipzig: the honest counterpoint to aggregator 'humanoids are working in factories at scale' framing, this is a verified pilot, not commercial-at-scale. As industrial equipment sold to manufacturers, it has no consumer price.
XPeng IRON
XPeng's IRON (from the Chinese EV maker XPeng) is a roughly 175-centimeter, 70-kilogram research humanoid, an automotive-OEM entrant into humanoids, the cross-OEM positioning that parallels Tesla Optimus emerging from a carmaker. DEPLOY records it at research maturity with no verified deployments. XPeng has shown IRON in staged demonstrations and stated consumer and industrial intentions, but the verification posture is demonstration, not verified autonomous deployment or commercial sale, and DEPLOY cap-flags aggregator 'autonomous' or 'shipping' framing. As a research platform it has no consumer price.
Common questions
- What is the difference between AEON and XPeng IRON?
- AEON and XPeng IRON are both humanoid robots on the DEPLOY registry. They differ in maker, maturity, price, verified deployments, and how much of their autonomy is independently verified. See the table above for the full head-to-head; each figure is sourced.
- Which has more verified deployments, AEON or XPeng IRON?
- AEON and XPeng IRON each have 1 verified deployment on the DEPLOY registry (confirmed at named sites with primary sources).
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