Chinese startup Spirit AI announced that their Spirit v1.5 embodied intelligence foundation model has recently taken the top spot in the RoboChallenge real-world robotics benchmark, surpassing a prominent U.S. model. The leaderboard reveals that Spirit v1.5 achieved an impressive total score of 66.09 with a task success rate of 50.33 percent, outperforming the U.S.-based Physical Intelligence’s pi0.5 model. The company has made the leading model and related resources open-source. RoboChallenge is recognized as a global benchmark for robots, evaluating embodied intelligence models in physical settings through tasks like object placement, target recognition, and tool use.
Spirit v1.5 not only secured the highest overall score on the platform but also emerged as the sole model to achieve a success rate surpassing 50 percent, based on publicly available data. Headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Spirit AI is dedicated to research in embodied intelligence and robotics. In 2025, they introduced the Moz1 humanoid robot for enterprise purposes like logistics and industrial applications.
Acknowledged by Qiu Jiefan, an associate professor at Zhejiang University of Technology, Spirit v1.5’s top ranking underscores its strong performance in various general robotics tasks and real-world scenarios. With its unified Vision-Language-Action (VLA) architecture, integrating perception, reasoning, and action into a seamless system, Spirit AI aims to minimize errors associated with traditional modular approaches. CEO Han Fengtao envisions the emergence of a broader range of service robots in the coming two to three years.
While the technology is not yet fully ready for widespread deployment, this achievement marks a significant advancement towards practical implementation in diverse fields. The company’s success underscores the significance of embodied intelligence’s ability to comprehend and execute tasks across multiple environments and situations. By emphasizing a comprehensive strategy, Spirit AI is poised to transform its news operations into a forward-looking service, APP Digital, catering to its diverse subscriber-base and the public.
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