robotic

Xpeng Motors (NYSE: XPEV) robotics subsidiary has signed a share purchase agreement with investors, aiming to raise over $900 million, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. Xpeng stated that this is the largest single financing completed by a Chinese company in the robotics field to date. The financing round was led by IDG Capital, with strategic follow-on investments from Tencent and Alibaba, and participation from Gao Rong Capital and others.In terms of financing structure, external investors contributed approximately $600 million, Xpeng's subsidiary contributed about $200 million, and CEO He Xiaopeng along with co-president Gu Hongdi's related entities contributed around $100 million. Xpeng will retain about 82% of the controlling stake and consolidate this business. The funds will be used for the research and development of the flagship humanoid robot IRON, the construction of embodied intelligence and data capabilities, as well as mass production and business expansion aimed for the end of 2026. IRON is equipped with Xpeng's self-developed robotics and AI-specific chips.This subsidiary is part of Xpeng's robotics platform Dogotix (Xpeng robotic dog/humanoid robot related entities). Alibaba and Tencent had previously participated as Pre-IPO investors in the financing of the Chinese humanoid robotics company Yushu Technology.

According to Reuters, Xiaopeng Group's humanoid robot business has signed equity financing agreements with multiple investors, raising over $900 million, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $6.3 billion, setting a record for single-round private equity financing in China's embodied intelligence industry.This round of financing was led by IDG Capital, with participation from Gao Rong Capital, and received support from two strategic investors, Tencent and Alibaba. The funds raised in this round will primarily be used for software and hardware research and development of Xiaopeng's robot business, physical AI model training and iteration, high-quality data collection, construction of a full-chain mass production base, and global commercialization expansion.

According to reports from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, humanoid intelligence company Current Robotics has publicly disclosed its financing progress for the first time: the company has completed seed round, angel round, and Pre-A round financing, with a total financing amount of hundreds of millions of RMB. The company's investors include financial investment institutions such as BV Baidu Ventures, Hillhouse Capital, Oasis Capital, Monolith Capital, Qianhai Ark, Fosun Wealth, Junshan Capital, as well as industry players like Zhiyuan Robotics, Xinghai Map, and Jike Technology.The financing funds will mainly be used to promote the large-scale collection of human body data, with a focus on investing in the research and development of core technologies such as full-body dexterous operation models and interactive world models.

At the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Robot Conference, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that in 2025, the operating income of enterprises above designated size in the robotics industry exceeded 300 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of over 20% in the past five years. In the first half of this year, it reached 165.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.5%. Robot technology and products have been widely applied in various aspects of the national economy and social development, becoming an important force in promoting high-quality development.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will focus on key industries with broad application spaces and strong demonstration effects, such as agriculture, healthcare, elderly care, and emergency response. It will organize targeted efforts for production and application pairing, on-site application verification, and promotion of mature scenarios, accelerating the iteration and upgrading of new technologies and new products through large-scale applications in new scenarios.

NVIDIA's Senior Director Huang Maidi visited LG Electronics' robotics research and development center in South Korea on Tuesday, meeting with LG Electronics executives to discuss plans to expand cooperation in the fields of artificial intelligence infrastructure and robotics.Last week, LG Electronics announced plans to launch a next-generation humanoid robot capable of bipedal walking in the first quarter of 2027, relying on NVIDIA's robotics platform.

According to Bloomberg, SoftBank Group invested $200 million in Swiss construction robotics startup Gravis Robotics, completing its Series A funding.Gravis originated from ETH Zurich and primarily develops autonomous hardware and software for earthmoving construction equipment, enabling heavy machinery to operate autonomously and allowing remote supervision of robotic fleets.

According to Bloomberg, Chinese robotics startup Robotera (Beijing Robot Era Technology Co., Ltd.) is preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong and has already begun collaborating with relevant advisors. Insiders reveal that the planned fundraising amount for this IPO is between 800 million and 1 billion USD.The company's investors include HSG and CDH Investments, and this listing plan comes at a time when there is a surge of robotics companies going public in Hong Kong.

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, deep-sea robotics company Deep Sea Intelligent has announced the completion of over 500 million yuan in Series A financing. New shareholders include Guanghe Venture Capital, Dacheng Financial Intelligence, Jiyuan Capital, Yida Capital, Zhongbao Investment, China Electronics Technology Group Investment, and Total Energy as the funding entity of the energy technology fund managed by Kaihui Fund Management.At the same time, a number of existing shareholders, including Zhengxuan Investment, Yunze Capital, Yunshi Capital, Gaojie Capital, and Xingzhi Capital, have significantly increased their investments.

According to reports from the investment community, Daimon Robotics announced the completion of a strategic round of financing worth hundreds of millions, led by Ant Group, with existing shareholders participating in the oversubscription. Two months ago, Daimon completed a Series A financing of hundreds of millions. Along with this round led by Ant Group, Daimon has gathered a group of leading industrial capital including China Merchants Venture Capital, Lenovo Capital, Huichuan Industrial Investment, China Mobile, and China Telecom.It is reported that Daimon recently officially launched the world's first tactile anchoring world model, Daimon-TWM, which integrates native tactile perception throughout understanding, reasoning, prediction, and verification, thereby constructing a "tactile nervous system" that connects fingertip perception to brain reasoning and back to action control, promoting embodied intelligence from "seeing the world" to "understanding the world" and "interacting with the world." Based on the widely deployed tactile perception devices and collection systems, Daimon has built the world's largest tactile multimodal physical world dataset, Daimon-Infinity.

According to the industry analysis platform Hello China Tech, as of June 2026, there are a total of 8 humanoid robot-related companies in China with valuations reaching or exceeding 20 billion yuan (approximately 2.9 billion USD), of which 5 companies have valuations primarily based on models rather than shipment volumes, with annual shipment volumes still maintaining at the hundreds level. In the second quarter, the financing amount in the humanoid robot field reached 6.95 billion USD, more than double that of the previous quarter.The report points out that the data collection costs vary significantly across different stages: the hourly wage for frontline operators is about 20 to 40 yuan, approximately 25 yuan when outsourced; the internal cost for companies involving robots is about 250 yuan; and the data price from government-supported training bases reaches 500 to 1000 yuan. However, the data produced through different collection methods (wearable devices and robot involvement) shows significant differences in quality and training effectiveness, with only about 50 hours of usable data from 100 hours of raw collection. The data measurement units used by different companies (hours, trajectories, skills, etc.) are incompatible, and there is a lack of independent auditing, leading to considerable uncertainty in valuation bases. It is believed that the industry urgently needs to establish a unified data asset measurement standard.

According to Business Insider, the American industrial robotics startup Avatar Robotics has completed a $6.5 million seed round of financing, led by AlleyCorp and Defy.vc, with participation from Headline and Henry Ford III.The company allows operators to remotely control robots through Meta Quest headsets and controllers to perform picking and packing tasks in warehouses, charging based on usage and at a cost lower than directly hiring warehouse workers. Avatar does not sell hardware but procures robot bodies from China, providing labor services through remote operation while recording the data of what the robots see and the operators' reactions, which is used to train AI models for more autonomous operations.

Jensen Huang announced on the X platform the launch of Alpamayo 2 Super, a cutting-edge open-source inference model developed by NVIDIA for the autonomous driving field. Jensen Huang stated that Alpamayo 2 Super can not only "see" the environment but also understand and reason about the complex world, thinking before acting, and can serve as the core model for robot taxis, autonomous trucks, shuttles, delivery vehicles, agricultural machinery, and future large-scale mobile robot systems.The model will be based on OpenMDW-1.1 and made available for commercial use, allowing developers and enterprises to inspect, fine-tune, and deploy the model. Jensen Huang mentioned that open models help promote the safety and reliability of autonomous driving systems. He stated that the next wave of artificial intelligence will belong to robotics, and autonomous vehicles will be an important starting point for this trend.

The robotics startup Exclaim Robotics, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, officially announced its emergence from stealth mode, completing a $4.95 million seed round of financing, which will be used to develop robotic products aimed at routine maintenance and upkeep operations for hyperscale data centers.The company is led by veteran robotics expert Helen Oleynikova, with investors including well-known early-stage investment firms in Europe.

According to Jinshi reports, Google's Deepmind has launched the Gemini Robotics ER 2 model.

According to The Block, Physical AI data engine company Axis Robotics has completed a $12 million seed round of financing, led by Hack VC, with participation from Nomad Capital, Pi Network Ventures, 10K Ventures, and others.Axis plans to build a large-scale "human-in-the-loop" global data engine to address the scarcity of training data for robots, difficulties in generalization, and compatibility issues with different hardware. Its platform covers task generation, simulation remote operation, mobile Ego data collection, and automated cleaning and labeling pipelines. Currently, it has over 100,000 active data contributors, generating approximately 1,200 hours of simulation data and 20,000 hours of real-world scenario data each month, and has established commercial partnerships with several hardware and industrial clients, including Booster Robotics and Geely Auto.

KB Financial Group announced the establishment of the "KB National Growth Unicorn Scale-up Fund," with a scale of 150 billion Korean won (approximately 108 million USD), fully funded by the group's subsidiaries' own capital, and managed by the KB Securities PE Growth Investment Division. The fund will focus on investing in companies in fields such as AI, semiconductors, secondary batteries, aerospace, mobile transportation, robotics, and biotechnology, aiming to cultivate unicorn companies in cutting-edge strategic industries.This decision was finalized at the "4th Productive Financial Consultation Meeting" held on July 24. KB Financial also formulated a financial support plan in line with the government's "three major super projects," covering support for semiconductors, power infrastructure investment, and physical AI companies and AI data centers. KB Financial plans to focus on discovering local innovative small and medium-sized enterprises through the CIB center and promote a shift in corporate evaluation culture from traditional financial statements and historical performance orientation to a evaluation system based on technological strength and future growth potential.

According to informed sources, SoftBank Group is considering acquiring Gravis Robotics AG, as SoftBank is targeting the artificial intelligence sector that supports robotics technology. SoftBank plans to make a significant investment in this European startup and incorporate it into its newly established company, Roze.SoftBank may complete the transaction in phases, achieving this through gradual acquisition of existing shares and injecting new funds. Informed sources say that this deal could ultimately value the Zurich-based Gravis company at over $500 million. They stated that no final decision has yet been made regarding the scale or structure of the transaction.

Artificial intelligence company World Labs, founded by Fei-Fei Li, announced the acquisition of robotics company SceniX, with the specific acquisition amount not disclosed. World Labs stated that robots are an important carrier for the implementation of spatial intelligence in the real world, and future robotic systems need to possess environmental perception, spatial understanding, behavioral reasoning, and reliable execution capabilities.After this acquisition, SceniX will be integrated into the World Labs team, and both parties plan to combine their respective strengths in spatial modeling and robotics technology to promote more application scenarios.

According to Bloomberg, the humanoid robot startup Walden Robotics, spun off from Toyota's robotics research lab, has completed approximately $300 million in seed funding, with a valuation of $1.1 billion. This round was co-led by Deviation Capital and Toyota Motor Corporation, with participation from Toyota's strategic investment and early-stage venture capital division, as well as Nvidia, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and CoreWeave Ventures.Walden is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, producing self-developed hardware, software, and AI models, focusing on deploying general-purpose robots in manufacturing and logistics facilities to handle tasks considered burdensome by workers. Co-founder Russ Tedrake revealed that they have begun selling humanoid robots to clients across multiple industries, including a pilot project at a North American Toyota plant, where the robots perform repetitive tasks such as loading and unloading automotive parts and cleaning equipment. Tedrake previously served as an executive at the Toyota Research Institute and teaches robotics courses at MIT.