The valuation of Unitree's suppliers has reached 20 billion.
Recently, Unitree Technology's prospectus disclosed impressive financial report data, attracting much attention. From January to September 2025, the company's revenue reached 1.167 billion yuan, and it shipped 5,500 humanoid robots throughout the year, ranking first in the world in terms of shipment volume.
Despite the excitement, Unitree may not actually be the most sought - after project by investors in the robotics track.
Multiple sources have revealed to me that "Lingxin Qiaoshou", the dexterous hand supplier for Unitree and Zhipu Robotics, is recently seeking a new round of financing at a valuation of about 20 billion yuan. In response to this news, Lingxin Qiaoshou told China Venture Capital that it declined to comment.
What does a valuation of 20 billion yuan mean in the track? Horizontally, according to Unitree's prospectus, in June 2025, the pre - investment valuation of the company's latest market - based equity financing was 12 billion yuan, and the post - investment valuation was 12.7 billion yuan. The post - investment valuation of Galaxy Universal exceeded 3 billion US dollars (about 21 billion yuan), and Zhipu's valuation reached 15 billion yuan after completing its Series B financing. That is to say, the valuation of a supply - chain company that provides "hands" for robots has exceeded that of leading complete - machine manufacturers.
It can be said that behind the boom of robots, the most expensive "hands" in history have been spawned. It should be noted that Lingxin Qiaoshou was established in July 2023, which is only a little over two years ago. A month ago, the company officially announced its Series B financing, and the post - investment valuation had risen to 10 billion yuan. But just a month later, the valuation doubled, reaching a new high.
Six rounds of financing in a year, "It's been a long time since we've seen this"
Public information shows that Lingxin Qiaoshou is currently the only company in the world that can produce 1,000 high - degree - of - freedom dexterous hands per month, and it is said to occupy more than 80% of the global high - degree - of - freedom dexterous hand market share.
In March 2025, I wrote an article about dexterous hands - "Unitree's Supplier Has Completely Boomed". At that time, Unitree had just become popular after appearing on the Spring Festival Gala, and sensitive VCs had flocked to this track. Lingxin Qiaoshou was still unknown at that time, but it had been finalized as Unitree's supplier, which was enough to attract "both those who understand and those who don't".
Investors who have witnessed the rapid development of the dexterous hand's valuation include Lao Huang, who appeared in the previous report.
Lao Huang's investment was made just before the explosion in volume. In 2024, when he first noticed this project, the company had not introduced other investors. In the year when the TS agreement was signed, the revenue was only 10 million yuan, "very low". When he officially invested in early 2025, the post - investment revenue was only 20 million yuan. But in the fourth quarter of 2025, the revenue suddenly soared to 250 million yuan, "the growth was astonishingly fast".
Another story I witnessed happened at the end of 2025. At that time, a state - owned enterprise in Anhui heard about the project, and three people quickly bought high - speed train tickets and rushed to its headquarters in Haidian, Beijing overnight. They wanted to know if there was still a chance to invest.
Actually, at the beginning of 2025, Xiao Yu in the team had investigated this company. His judgment at that time was that it would succeed, but he wanted to wait a little longer. But after just a few months, the price was already unaffordable. When they walked out of the building and were in the elevator, they looked at each other in silence. Xiao Yu patted his head and said, "The progress of the industry is too fast." After returning to the headquarters, during the investment decision - making meeting, they repeatedly deduced based on the PPT and financial models, and finally gave up following the investment because of the high price.
Looking back, in just a few months, the revenue increased from 10 million yuan to 250 million yuan, a 25 - fold increase. As a result, the financing accelerated and the valuation soared. The company's valuation increased from 1.6 billion yuan to 3 billion yuan, and then quickly soared to 10 billion yuan, and now it has reached 20 billion yuan.
Looking back at the financing process, Lingxin Qiaoshou had six consecutive rounds of financing in 2025:
In April 2025, the seed round exceeded 100 million yuan, led by Sequoia China Seed Fund and Wankai New Materials; in August, the angel round was hundreds of millions of yuan, led by Ant Group, followed by CICC Capital, Shanghai Semiconductor Equipment Fund, etc.; in October, the Series A was hundreds of millions of yuan, led by Beijing Guorui and Bojia Capital; in November, the Series A+ was hundreds of millions of yuan, with Zhejiang Innovation Investment, Deqing Industrial Investment, CDH Baifu, Leju Robotics, Aux, etc. participating; in December, the Series A++ round saw Sequoia China, Creation Partners, etc. join.
By February 2026, the company officially announced a new round of Series B financing of nearly 1.5 billion yuan, invested by Daode Investment, Shengshi Investment, Xinding Capital, etc., and the post - investment valuation had reached 10 billion yuan. And the new round of financing is progressing at a valuation of 20 billion yuan. There are also internal reports that it is expected to apply for an IPO in 2026. If everything goes smoothly, this company may take less than five years from its birth to listing.
"Although many projects in the hard - tech track have become popular in the past two years, such a large increase has not been seen in the primary market for a long time," Lao Huang sighed.
However, this valuation is also controversial in the track.
Why can a component manufacturer surpass a complete - machine manufacturer? Xiao Yu believes it is the logic of "selling shovels".
In the uncertain track of humanoid robots, capital naturally looks for "relative certainty". None of Unitree, Zhipu, or Tesla Optimus can claim to have found the ultimate form. The complete - machine solutions are still in rapid iteration. The leading solution today may be subverted by a new technical route tomorrow. Therefore, the valuation of complete - machine manufacturers actually contains huge technical uncertainties and competitive risks.
In comparison, core components such as dexterous hands, joint modules, and sensors are common necessities for complete - machine manufacturers. No matter which complete - machine manufacturer succeeds, it will need these components. Moreover, the technical difficulty of dexterous hands is extremely high, and there are very few companies that can truly achieve mass production with stable performance.
"However, at the current stage, the valuation is indeed a bit high," many investors unanimously believe. "At present, nothing is certain, and we still need to look at the long - term. If it can truly become the leader in the global or domestic dexterous hand market, then the current market value is not high. It depends on how you judge its future."
VC investor Wang Zheng told me that since nothing is certain, some capital has begun to diverge. For example, capital is also paying attention to another veteran in the dexterous hand field in the track. It was established in 2016 and achieved commercial mass production in 2020. However, their positions are different. Some people commented, "Its technical foundation is not inferior to Lingxin Qiaoshou, but the valuations are not on the same level."
Currently, embodied intelligence has not entered thousands of households, which means that the huge demand for dexterous hands has not yet emerged. Every player has a chance, and it depends on who can develop faster and build a higher moat.
At least 100 VCs want to meet him, but he refused
Amid the rapid financing, Zhou Yong, the founder of Lingxin Qiaoshou, appears unusually calm.
Regarding the valuation bubble, Zhou Yong gave an answer in a recent media interview. He said that the essence of a bubble is having only stories but no products, and only financing but no deliveries. The entire robotics industry has entered the stage of mass production, the popularization of dexterous hands has promoted the implementation of real - world scenarios, and the commercial closed - loop has been completed. Technology, products, customers, and data are all being continuously realized. This is real growth, not a bubble.
Zhou Yong also believes that "compared with Figure's valuation of nearly 40 billion US dollars, the current valuations of Chinese embodied companies are all too low", and "within two years, the leading Chinese embodied intelligence companies will reach a market value of 100 billion yuan, and within five years, they will reach a market value of one trillion yuan".
Zhou Yong was born in 1986 and was admitted to the Youth Class of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2000. Before Lingxin Qiaoshou, he had two entrepreneurial experiences: the first was in the game and community field, where he built an application framework for 3D simulation data; the second was in the unmanned vehicle field, where he accumulated rich experience in using sensors and in autonomous driving algorithms. These seemingly scattered experiences were finally integrated into the main line of embodied intelligence.
He has expressed his pursuit of his dream: "In my life, I want to create a universal pocket like Doraemon's." This dream originated from a persistent desire when he was five or six years old. At that time, he couldn't distinguish between animation and reality and cried for his parents to buy him a real Doraemon. That unfulfilled desire eventually became the background of his entrepreneurship.
In 2019, Zhou Yong re - selected his entrepreneurial direction. He analyzed 10 industries such as VR, AR, the metaverse, and web3, and believed that none of them could bring about a transformation in human productivity. "Things that can change productivity, such as flying cars and Mars exploration. Even by 2050, the number of people who can go to Mars will not exceed 500,000. By 2050, the number of robots may reach 50 billion." So, he chose to enter the robotics industry.
But why specifically "hands"? Zhou Yong believes that hands are the core for robots to perform tasks. Dexterous hands determine whether robots can truly enter the human world and complete human work. It is not just a simple execution component, but the core entrance for robots to perceive, interact with, and transform the world.
Zhou Yong admitted that what really impressed the Sequoia investors was not his plan to make "one hand", but his plan to make "one million hands". "Making just one hand may not result in a general - purpose hand. We need many hands to accumulate enough data and skills. Others make hands just for the sake of making hands, while I make hands not just for the hands themselves, but to restore various human skills. I want to create one million skills, just to create Doraemon's pocket."
In 2019, when the team made the first dexterous hand, they tried to purchase micro - reducers overseas but found that the precision was insufficient, the cost was too high, and customization was not possible. So, they decided to conduct self - research. There were no ready - made solutions available, whether for hardware or software. Currently, the Lingxin Qiaoshou team has rapidly expanded from about 50 people at the beginning to nearly 300 people.
It is reported that Lingxin Qiaoshou will focus on components in the future and will not make the robot body. This "selling shovels" position should have more strategic value than being a new complete - machine manufacturer.
So, what is the moat that supports Lingxin Qiaoshou to become the leader in the current track? The answer it gives is: data and full - stack self - research.
Full - stack self - research has significantly restructured its cost structure and accelerated the introduction of downstream customers. For example, its lightweight new product, Linker Hand O6, is priced at 6,666 yuan for the standard version, and the Lite version is only sold for 3,999 yuan after subsidies. Zhou Yong also plans to further reduce the price - the O series can ultimately reach the level of 499 yuan, so that students learning embodied intelligence can afford to buy it.
For Lingxin Qiaoshou, full - stack self - research not only reduces costs but also represents a major data strategy. Through its self - developed hardware foundation, it has built a multi - modal data collection system to collect a database of human hand skills. Therefore, the company has established the dexterous operation data set "LinkerSkillNet", insisting on collecting data from the real physical world rather than relying on simulator training to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the dexterous hand in learning hand movements.
Xiao Yu believes that for dexterous hand manufacturers, the moat of hardware is not that strong. In the end, it depends on the development of cerebellum data. "Lingxin Qiaoshou has raised so much money and will build more data collection sites. This is indeed its future advantage."
In July 2023, Lingxin Qiaoshou was established, but it didn't open the financing channel until 2025. Zhou Yong said that at least 100 VCs wanted to meet him in 2023, but he refused because there was no mass production yet. Now, with so much capital, Zhou Yong, facing industry competition, straightforwardly stated that it is highly likely that by the second half of this year, capital will no longer invest in new start - up companies in the dexterous hand field.
The "competition" has just begun
Turning our perspective to the industry, although the development of robots has made great progress, there is still a gap from "being able to move" to "being usable" in the industry.
For example, in the factory handling scenario, robots still mainly use two - finger grippers instead of more anthropomorphic dexterous hands. This reflects that there is still a lack of exploration of the integration of dexterous hands and scenarios in the industry, which is a more core bottleneck than the hardware level.
This gap is reflected in two major "equilibrium problems": one is the contradiction between ultimate dexterity and industrial practicality - an increase in the degree of freedom will inevitably lead to a soaring cost, an increase in control complexity, and a decrease in system reliability; the other is the gap between advanced design and the existing supply - chain capabilities - even if the design plan is perfect, finding a supply chain that can produce the required core components on a large scale, at low cost, and with high reliability is a huge challenge in itself.
Currently, the players in the dexterous hand track are mainly divided into three categories:
The first category is independent suppliers that "focus on in - depth research", represented by Lingxin Qiaoshou. They try all technical routes and make their products highly cost - effective to meet the cost - reduction and efficiency - improvement needs of a wide range of small and medium - sized robots and standardized production lines.
The second category is component manufacturers that operate "from top to bottom", represented by Yishi Robotics. Yishi started with micro - servo cylinders and has opened up the entire robot value chain.
The third category is complete - machine manufacturers that operate "from bottom to top", such as Zhipu Robotics and Unitree Technology. Zhipu has formed a full - series of dexterous hand products, including 12 - degree - of - freedom five - finger dexterous hands, 6 - degree - of - freedom five - finger dexterous hands, two - finger grippers, etc.
The future of robots is moving forward rapidly, and the market for these "hands" is bound to expand. According to GGII's prediction, the sales volume of Chinese robot dexterous hands will exceed 340,000 in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of about 90% from 2024 to 2030. QYResearch predicts that the global market size of multi - finger dexterous hands for robots will exceed 5 billion US dollars in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 64.6% from 2024 to 2030.
Regarding the final global market pattern of robots, many people believe that China may be the ultimate winner.
In addition to the top - level strategic design, China has a complete and efficient supply - chain system. From rare earths, high - performance magnets, physical parts to batteries, all can be supplied locally. This means that Chinese manufacturers have a natural advantage in procurement costs and product development time. Moreover, China is the world's largest application market, providing rich trial - and - error data for robots and driving rapid technological iteration.
"There may be five companies in the end, and all of them are likely to be Chinese companies," this is Zhou Yong's answer. Wang Zheng believes that China can not only lead in hardware and mass - production capabilities but also outperform overseas companies in software and intelligence.
(Lao Huang, Xiao Yu, and Wang Zheng in the article are aliases)