Das rasante Kapitalspiel von ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS: 15 Start-ups binnen einem Jahr massiv investiert und 17 Joint-Ventures gegründet

Over the past year or so, Zeyuan Robotics has been like a "capital aircraft carrier", sailing in the embodied intelligence industry in a completely different posture from ordinary startups.

In July, Zeyuan announced the acquisition of Shangwei New Materials. Since then, the company's stock price has hit the daily limit for several consecutive days, and now it has risen more than ten times compared with the beginning of July.

In August, Deng Taihua, the founder, chairman and CEO, revealed that Zeyuan had invested in 15 early-stage projects, of which 70% were led by him for incubation, and the rest were invested in the seed and angel stages. Meanwhile, in September, it joined hands with Hillhouse to set up an embodied intelligence industry fund worth hundreds of millions of yuan to discover and support projects related to the embodied intelligence industry chain, and is preparing to establish a larger CVC platform.

Behind these actions, Zeyuan's investment activities have two clear main lines: on the one hand, it directly invests in body and large model companies, such as Digital Huaxia, Shouxing Technology, Lingchu Intelligence, and Xingyuanzhi Robotics; on the other hand, it heavily invests in key component enterprises, including Qianjue Robotics, Linghou Robotics, and Fuxing Motor.

In addition, Zeyuan has also established at least 17 new companies through joint ventures, leveraging listed companies or local industrial groups to enter production capacity, channels and scenarios.

According to public information, more than 40 listed companies have reached cooperation with Zeyuan, including capital cooperation. The companies involved include Lingyi Precision Industry, Shangwei New Materials, Bozhong Precision, Wolong Electric Drive, Junpu Intelligence, Dafeng Industry, BYD, SAIC Group, Longcheer Technology, Lens Technology, iSoftStone, Luxshare Precision, JD Technology, Tencent, Sanhua Intelligent Control, iFlytek, and OPPO.

Deng Taihua once said bluntly that with the strategy of "investing in early and small projects", Zeyuan achieved an annualized investment return of eight times in the past year or so. This year, Zeyuan officially launched the "Zeyuan Plan A", aiming to incubate more than 50 early-stage projects in three years and build an industrial cluster.

Setting up funds, incubating startups, initiating mergers and acquisitions, and binding with leading companies in the industry chain... Zeyuan is trying to outline an industrial ecosystem map covering "components - body - application scenarios".

01.

A Huawei - affiliated operator will ship a thousand units this year

Zeyuan's intensive investment layout is inseparable from the support of its team, technology and capital.

On September 19, Zeyuan officially disclosed the list of its partner team on its official website: Deng Taihua serves as the founder, chairman and CEO; Peng Zhihui serves as the co - founder, president and CTO; Jiang Qingsong serves as the partner, senior vice - president and president of the marketing service department; Yao Maoqing serves as the partner, senior vice - president and president of the embodied business department; Wang Chuang serves as the partner, senior vice - president and president of the general business department; Luo Jianlan serves as the partner, senior vice - president and chief scientist; Niu Jia serves as the partner, vice - president and chief human resources officer.

Most of the core members come from the "Huawei camp": Deng Taihua once served as the vice - president of Huawei, the president of the computing product line, and the person in charge of the wireless product line of Huawei. He is also the core person in charge of Huawei's Ascend AI business; Peng Zhihui was selected into Huawei's "Genius Youth" program; Jiang Qingsong once served as the country manager of Huawei's overseas enterprises and the vice - president of the operator solutions department.

In terms of the body, cerebellum and brain, Zeyuan has made layouts. In terms of hardware, its products have four major series: Expedition, Lingxi, Elf, and Juechen, covering scenarios such as industry, logistics, culture and tourism, family companionship, scientific research and education, and commercial cleaning.

Although Zeyuan's product line seems scattered, it is actually based on the current industry situation where customer needs vary greatly. It covers more application scenarios through multi - form products. Deng Taihua also said that "next year, the company will focus on the initial practice of entering factories and families, and gradually move from the B2B to the B2C market."

In terms of the brain, in March, Zeyuan released a general embodied base large model - Zeyuan Qiyuan Large Model (Genie Operator - 1). This model uses the ViLLA architecture and can learn from human videos. It can achieve rapid generalization with small samples in new scenarios and tasks, and supports deployment to different robot bodies. On September 23, Zeyuan open - sourced this large model.

To address the shortage of high - quality data for embodied intelligence, Zeyuan has formed a dataset AgiBot World through its own data collection factory and open - sourced it, covering hundreds of scenarios such as home, laboratory, and retail stores.

In addition to building a comprehensive product ecosystem, Zeyuan also improves the openness of this ecosystem by launching a development platform. On October 24, Zeyuan released a zero - code robot content creation platform - Lingchuang Platform, allowing users to directly generate action instructions for humanoid robots to execute on this platform even without professional programming skills and equipment.

The team background and product layout are important reasons for Zeyuan to attract capital attention.

Zeyuan's valuation exceeded one billion US dollars less than half a year after its establishment, making it the fastest - growing embodied intelligence company in the world to become a unicorn. So far, Zeyuan has completed ten rounds of financing, with a valuation of 15 billion. The latest round of financing took place in August this year, when it received strategic investment from LG Electronics and Korea Future Asset Group.

It is reported that Zeyuan will complete its Series C financing by the end of this year and will introduce more international industrial investors.

Zeyuan has a luxurious lineup of industrial shareholders, including BYD, Sanhua Holding, Lijiang Innovation, Shangqi Capital, BAIC, TCL, Wolong Electric Drive, iSoftStone, JD, Baidu, Tencent, etc. These industrial shareholders may bring potential cooperation opportunities in robot application scenarios to Zeyuan.

Zeyuan Robotics expects to ship thousands of units this year, tens of thousands of units next year, and plans to achieve an annual production scale of hundreds of thousands of units in the next few years.

02.

Investing in upstream component enterprises

and promoting each other with body development

In the field of core robot components, Zeyuan's layout features "locking in key components + coordinating body development": on the one hand, it focuses on investing in enterprises related to motors, drivers, sensors, tactile perception, etc. to improve the stability of the supply chain;

on the other hand, Zeyuan is not just making financial investments. It also promotes scenario collaboration by signing strategic cooperation agreements, promotes each other with body development, and learns from the mature commercialization experience of some upstream manufacturers to expand business channels.

According to public information, Zeyuan has currently invested in a total of 5 enterprises in the upstream component field.

Fuxing Motor is a joint - venture enterprise between China, Switzerland and Germany, producing a full range of servo motors, DC brushless motors, hybrid stepping motors and related drivers.

Qianjue Robotics' core products include high - resolution multi - modal tactile sensors, tactile perception and control intelligent modules, etc.

Xier Robotics has developed a large number of fully digital servo drive products. The two sides once signed a scenario application agreement; it is a subsidiary of Wolong Electric Drive, and Wolong Electric Drive has also completed a strategic investment signing with Zeyuan Robotics.

Linghou Robotics is a subsidiary of Bozhong Precision. Its products cover visual components and motion components such as linear motors, industrial robots and AGVs; the two sides previously cooperated on Zeyuan's "Expedition" series of wheeled humanoid robot projects.

The controlling shareholder of Huazhicheng is Tianshui Huatian Electronics Group, the parent company of A - share listed company Huatian Technology. The latter has signed a strategic cooperation agreement on embodied intelligence with Zeyuan to promote the large - scale application of robots in high - precision and repetitive links of the packaging and testing production line.

03.

Investing in body enterprises focusing on bionics and rigid - demand scenarios

and two large model enterprises

At the robot body level, Zeyuan has invested in companies like Digital Huaxia and Shouxing Technology that focus on emotional interaction and high - bionic technology, as well as Yushu Intelligence and Wujie Wisdom that focus more on rigid - demand scenario applications such as urban sanitation and health care.

On different model technology routes, Zeyuan conducts diversified explorations through self - research, cooperation and investment: it self - develops the embodied intelligence model Qiyuan Large Model GO - 1 internally, cooperates with Physical Intelligence externally, and has also invested in embodied model companies Lingchu Intelligence and Xingyuanzhi Robotics.

Zeyuan's cooperation with these enterprises goes far beyond investment, involving technological collaborative R & D, product incubation and application, etc.

According to public information, Zeyuan has currently invested in a total of 7 enterprises in the fields related to robot bodies and large models.

Digital Huaxia and Zeyuan Robotics jointly developed the bionic robot Xia Lan. The part above the neck was self - developed by Digital Huaxia, and the limbs below the neck were jointly developed by both sides.

Lingchu Intelligence has launched the Psi R1 model, which has the ability of autonomous reasoning based on the "Chain of Action Thought (CoAT)" framework and can make complex decisions in an open environment.

Yushu Intelligence is a subsidiary of Yuhetian Group, a leading sanitation enterprise. It mainly develops intelligent robot products suitable for various scenarios, such as unmanned cleaning vehicles, intelligent sorting robots, and inspection drones.

Wujie Wisdom focuses on the R & D and application of companion robots, providing intelligent solutions for the health care and medical fields and building a service robot system with the ability of autonomous perception, understanding, decision - making and execution.

Shouxing Technology focuses on the R & D of ultra - bionic emotional interaction robots. Its self - developed CharacterMind is an emotional base system for future interaction, which can inject real emotional perception and expression abilities into robots, digital humans and various embodied AI characters.

Xingyuanzhi Robotics was incubated by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence. It has created a highly generalized and universal brain across different bodies, enabling robots not only to "understand" the world, but also to make plans and decisions based on this "understanding of the world".

Feikuo Technology has self - developed the FLY・Tianshu system, which integrates technologies such as lidar, visual sensing, and voice interaction to create intelligent interaction capabilities for robots, supporting the rapid access of multi - brand robots and deployment without hardware modification.

04.

Cooperating with listed companies to establish joint - venture enterprises

covering multiple nodes in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain

Currently, Zeyuan has established at least 17 joint - venture enterprises with many listed companies, local state - owned enterprises and leading investment institutions, and most of its shareholding in these joint - ventures ranges from 5% to 30%. It is worth mentioning that many of these enterprises are suppliers to Huawei.

These joint - venture enterprises cover multiple key nodes in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain: including the manufacturing of components such as reducers and joint modules, integration and deployment, and data engineering, and also conduct in - depth cooperation in orders and mass production. Many joint - venture enterprises focus on more vertical scenarios, such as commercial cleaning, culture and entertainment, and IP, and exhibition hall services.

Wang Chuang, the president of Zeyuan's general business department, previously mentioned that the ultimate goal of cooperating with listed companies is to jointly explore the application scenarios of embodied intelligence.

Zeyuan has roughly three types of cooperation partners:

First, leading enterprises with application scenarios, represented by Fuling Precision and Dafeng Industry. The cooperation between the two sides will quickly introduce products into actual scenarios for verification and optimization in a real environment; second, technology service enterprises represented by iSoftStone, through which Zeyuan can leverage their technology service capabilities and customer networks to jointly serve customers and expand the market; third, technology - expert enterprises represented by Lingxi Technology. The cooperation between the two sides can strengthen Zeyuan's capabilities in core areas such as industrial vision.

By establishing joint - venture enterprises, the two sides form an interest - binding relationship. Some enterprises supply components to Zeyuan and participate in the production of robots, while others open up industrial and commercial scenarios to jointly promote the mass production and implementation of robots.

SoftStone Tianqing: The joint - venture partner iSoftStone is a software and information technology service provider; SoftStone Tianqing has released the humanoid robot Tianhe C1, which serves in enterprise exhibition halls, government service halls, museums and other places.

Zhilaitai: The joint - venture partner Fangtuote focuses on automobile transmission systems; Zhilaitai has launched a series of reducer products, which have been applied in scenarios such as cleaning robots, interactive robots, and flexible manufacturing.

Lizhiganzhi: The joint - venture partner Lijiang Innovation focuses on the precision optics field and has a close relationship with the precision manufacturing leader Luxshare Precision. Zeyuan once mentioned externally that Luxshare Precision has a clear and urgent need to enter the humanoid robot market in the 3C assembly link.

Guanggu Dongzhi: The joint - venture partner Dongyangguangke is mainly engaged in electronic new materials; Guanggu Dongzhi will build a humanoid robot production line in Guanggu and release a full series of robots and embodied intelligence models.