Former top executive of Xiaopeng Robot starts a business in the AI companion robot field and completes tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing. | Exclusive from 36Kr.

Written by Wang Fangyu

Edited by Su Jianxun

36Kr exclusively learned that Shanghai Luobo Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Luobo Intelligent"), founded by Sun Zhaozhi, the former product design director of Xiaopeng Robotics, has completed a tens of millions of yuan angel round of financing in the middle of the year, invested by industry-related parties.

According to public information, Sun Zhaozhi is the former product design director of Xiaopeng Robotics (Pengxing Intelligence), and he once served as the interior design director of Xiaopeng Automobile, the product director of Didi's car-making project, and the founder of the XID Lab User Experience Design Studio. He is a well-known hardware user experience expert and industrial designer in the industry.

Luobo Intelligent was founded in January 2024, and the company's business direction is AI companion robots. 36Kr learned that the positioning of its first product is "AI Trendy Toy", and the design and development of the first three rounds of prototypes have been completed, and it is expected to be released and mass-produced next year.

The AI companion robot product of Luobo Intelligent               Source: Authorized by the enterprise

With the rapid development of the AI large model industry in the past two years, the AI companion field has gradually become a popular track that entrepreneurs are concerned about. Startup teams including Yijia Yiban, Qidian Lingzhi, Yueran Innovation, and Beipei Technology are all committed to developing various companion devices based on AI large models. Most of these new startup teams set their target users as children.

Luobo Intelligent differentiates by setting its target users as young women. Sun Zhaozhi said that the strong demand of young women for emotional companionship and comfort has been verified by the market. He gave examples that the core users of the current AI companion software on the market are mostly young women, and the core users of previously popular nurturing products, such as Bandai's "Tamagotchi" electronic pet machine, Travel Frog, and Animal Crossing, are also women.

In terms of product form, the first AI companion robot product of Luobo Intelligent takes into account both the desktop and wearable scenarios. At the same time, the robot hardware has multiple degrees of freedom of movement and strong dynamic expressiveness, which can achieve more vivid interaction with consumers.

Unlike the AI assistants on mobile phones, to achieve the companion function, AI companion hardware also needs to have basic functions such as recognizing user emotions and memorizing user information. It is introduced that the first product of Luobo Intelligent applies the multi-modal large model RTC real-time audio and video interaction technology, which significantly optimizes the delay problem, and at the same time has product innovations such as long-term memory, autonomous learning, and personality cultivation.

In terms of the team, the other members of the Luobo Intelligent team mainly come from technology and trendy toy companies such as ByteDance, Huawei, DJI, SenseTime, MiniMax, and Pop Mart. The team has rich work experience in large model emotional companion applications and styling design.

In the past two years, the AI companion industry has developed rapidly and has become one of the fastest-growing tracks in the current artificial intelligence field, and its huge development potential has been widely recognized. A report recently released by the Tencent Research Institute pointed out that compared with the European and American markets, AI companions have a more extensive landing foundation in China. The AI companion market can reach the level of hundreds of billions in 3 - 5 years.

"Next year is expected to be the first year of the explosion of AI companion hardware." Sun Zhaozhi said that Luobo Intelligent is committed to creating the emotional value of robots and hopes to build a benchmark brand in the field of AI emotional companion hardware.