Over 40 VCs have placed bets, and an 80s-born founder is gearing up for the first underwater robot IPO.

In the past year, the robotics field has undoubtedly been the track with the most concentrated industry consensus. Amid this upsurge, humanoid robots have been mired in controversy due to the unclear implementation scenarios. In contrast, non - humanoid robots are more favored by capital, thanks to their clear real - world demands and commercialization potential.

Underwater robots are a typical example. At the end of 2025, the CSRC tutoring publicity system showed that the IPO tutoring status of Sublue Ocean Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sublue") had changed to "tutoring acceptance", and the tutoring institution was CICC. As early as October 2023, the company officially submitted the IPO tutoring filing, aiming directly at the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and went through 8 periods of tutoring work during this time.

It is reported that Sublue plans to raise 1.5 billion yuan in this IPO. If it goes public successfully, Sublue will become the "first stock of Chinese underwater robots".

Over 40 Capital Investors, Including Lei Jun, Place Bets

Wei Jiancang, the helmsman of Sublue, is an "80s generation" with a profound technical background. He was the first batch of national defense students at Tianjin University and was later recommended for further study at the National University of Defense Technology. He once worked at the Experimental Instrument Factory of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, engaged in the research and development of medical experimental equipment.

In 2013, Wei Jiancang chose to leave the military and enter the business world. At that time, he found that compared with the maturity of underwater equipment in European and American countries, almost no one in China paid attention to the underwater robot market. Those involved were mostly agent enterprises, and the main components relied on imports. "In the underwater drone industry, we lack many core capabilities and there are few private companies. Someone needs to step up and do this well. So I left the army and wanted to do something that could provide core support for China's marine resource development and national security," Wei Jiancang once talked about his entrepreneurial motivation in an interview.

After several years of efforts, Sublue successfully industrialized the domestically - developed underwater thruster. Today, the company has a very rich product line, including tethered underwater robots, autonomous vehicles, and underwater gliders. These advanced equipment have played an important role in fields such as marine scientific research, water conservancy and hydropower, and emergency rescue. In many major emergencies, such as the rescue of the bus that fell into the Yangtze River in Wanzhou, Chongqing, and the shipwreck accident in Phuket, Sublue's equipment provided crucial technical support.

In addition, Sublue also has a consumer - grade brand, Sublue, which provides personal users with intelligent products for water sports, such as underwater thrusters, powered floating boards, underwater drones, and intelligent surfboards. The products are sold to more than 70 countries around the world, and the brand is regarded as the "DJI" in the underwater equipment field.

In terms of capital attention, when Sublue was founded in 2013, it received support from two individual investors, Sun Haibo and Huang Jian. In April 2017, Sublue received its first financing of over 100 million yuan, led by Cableway Investment. Not only did the old backers Sun Haibo, Huang Jian, Yuanxing Capital, and TEDA Science and Technology Investment increase their investment, but it also caught the eye of Lei Jun, and Shunwei Capital joined in. Since then, Sublue has become another member of the Xiaomi ecosystem.

As of now, Sublue has gone through more than ten rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of over 1.3 billion yuan. The equity structure shows that the founder, Wei Jiancang, directly holds 23.64% of the shares, making him the largest shareholder and the actual controller of the company. The institutional shareholder camp is large and dispersed, with a total of 43 shareholders. Among them, "Shenzhen Capital Group System" (holding 9.11% through Yuanxing Equity) is the largest institutional shareholder; followed by TEDA Science and Technology Investment and Haida Investment, each holding 4.91% of the shares; Cableway Investment and Hongtai Fund hold 4.18% and 3.52% respectively; Shunwei Capital holds 2.48% through Hangzhou Shunying, ranking among the top six institutional shareholders.

The Underwater Robot Track Continues to Heat Up

In 2025, deep - sea technology was listed alongside commercial spaceflight and low - altitude economy as an emerging industry and officially written into the "Government Work Report". In the capital market, marine economy concept stocks have continued to strengthen. Many startups in the field have completed financing one after another, and a large number of deep - sea technology players are quickly "emerging".

Among them, in May last year, ShiHang Intelligence, which was only established for 2 years, completed two consecutive rounds of financing, the Angel + round and the Pre - A round, totaling 50 million yuan. The investors included China Merchants Group's CMG Startups and GSR Ventures. The founder of the company graduated from Harbin Engineering University and Northwestern Polytechnical University and led the research and development of the first commercial underwater cleaning robot in China and the first unmanned surface equipment of a certain type in China.

In June and September last year, Shandong Future Robot, established in 2015, completed two rounds of financing totaling hundreds of millions of yuan. The investors included CNPC Kunlun Capital and CICC Capital. The company's business covers the development and related services of work - class ROVs (large - scale underwater robots), shallow - water application robots in fields such as trenching, mining, and subsea engineering construction. Its customers include CNOOC Energy Company and China Yangtze Power Co., Ltd.

Cao Ying, the COO of ShiHang United Innovation, once revealed to Touzhongwang that the R & D costs for underwater scenarios are actually higher than those for humanoid robots in other scenarios. In the entire robotics track, it is rare for a company to achieve profitability within a year or so after a large amount of R & D investment.

In terms of revenue, Sublue has shown a strong expansion trend in recent years. From 2022 to 2024, its operating revenues were 141 million yuan, 235 million yuan, and 251 million yuan respectively, with an average annual compound growth rate of 33.23%. In 2025, its revenue in the first half of the year alone reached 141 million yuan, matching the full - year level of 2022. This indicates that the company's global penetration in the consumer - grade market such as underwater thrusters and the steady delivery of industrial - grade underwater robot orders have driven the company into a critical period of large - scale revenue expansion.

However, affected by the high - level R & D investment in the early stage and equity incentives, as of the end of June 2025, the company's accumulated undistributed profit was - 622 million yuan, and it has not fully turned a profit yet. But looking at the annual trend, the net loss has been significantly reduced from 134 million yuan in 2022 to 66 million yuan in 2024. In the first half of 2025, the net loss has narrowed to 2.0781 million yuan.

According to its calculations, the company's earliest expected time to turn a profit may be 2026, and whether it can achieve profitability in 2026 is mainly affected by a combination of factors such as operating revenue, gross profit margin level, and period expenses.

As the global marine economy enters the intelligent era, the penetration rate of deep - sea robots in fields such as energy development, national defense security, and ecological restoration is rapidly increasing. Data shows that from 2018 to 2022, the market scale of Chinese underwater robots increased from 1.24 billion yuan to 6.27 billion yuan and is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan in 2027. The global market for the delivery of deep - sea robot complete machines will reach 420 billion yuan by 2028, and the scale of the related engineering service market is as high as 1.5 trillion yuan.

Industry veterans believe that compared with unmanned surface vessels, the market for underwater robots has higher certainty and clearer application scenarios. Currently, this field is mainly divided into three categories: defense - grade, industrial - grade, and consumer - grade. Among them, the thresholds for defense and industrial grades are extremely high, and although the consumer - grade market is highly competitive, the overseas market is relatively more mature.

For these companies, the future competition will focus on two core technologies: one is acoustic sensors. Currently, this field is still dominated by traditional marine powers such as Denmark and the UK. Whoever can achieve independent and controllable underwater acoustic detection will master the core competitiveness; the other is the navigation, positioning, and attitude control system, which is the "basic skill" for underwater robots to perform tasks stably.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Dongsi Shitiao Capital" (ID: DsstCapital), author: Wei Xianghui, published by 36Kr with authorization.