Zeng Yuqun made the largest single investment in Embodied Intelligence to date.

Abstract:

Since its establishment, Galaxy Universal has been favored by capital. So far, it has completed four rounds of financing. The investors behind it include strategic and industrial investors such as CATL and Meituan Strategic Investment; funds from scientific research institutions such as the fund of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and the Beida Yanyuan Fund; and state - owned investment platforms in many places such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

The largest single - round financing in the embodied intelligence track has emerged.

Today, Galaxy Universal announced the completion of a new round of financing worth 1.1 billion yuan, led by CATL Strategic Investment and Puquan Capital, with well - known investors such as SDIC Venture Capital of the China Development Bank, Beijing Robotics Industry Fund, and GGV Capital following up.

Reporters from the Venture Capital Daily noticed that this is the largest single - round financing in the field of embodied large - model robots so far. Galaxy Universal has raised more than 2.4 billion yuan in total in two years, setting a new record for the highest cumulative financing amount in this field.

It is worth mentioning that Puquan Capital, one of the leading investors, is also an industrial capital platform under CATL. That is to say, CATL plays an important role in this large - scale financing round of Galaxy Universal.

Matrix Partners and BlueRun Ventures Led the Seed Round

Galaxy Universal was established in May 2023 and is one of the leading projects in the domestic embodied intelligence track.

Since its establishment, Galaxy Universal has been favored by capital. So far, it has completed four rounds of financing. The investors behind it include strategic and industrial investors such as CATL and Meituan Strategic Investment; funds from scientific research institutions such as the fund of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and the Beida Yanyuan Fund; and state - owned investment platforms in many places such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

Reporters from the Venture Capital Daily noticed that in June 2023, the investors in the seed - round financing of Galaxy Universal included Matrix Partners and BlueRun Ventures; in June of the following year, it completed an angel - round investment of 700 million yuan, with investors including Qiming Venture Partners, BAIC Capital, Shangtang Guoxiang Capital, and iFlytek Venture Capital.

As the global leader in power batteries, CATL's investment in Galaxy Universal is of great guiding significance.

An insider in the field of embodied intelligence told reporters from the Venture Capital Daily that CATL's leading investment reflects multiple strategic intentions. Firstly, in terms of technology, CATL's battery management system (BMS) and energy - storage technology in the new - energy field can complement Galaxy Universal's capabilities in the embodied intelligence large model. At the same time, CATL has further strengthened its layout in the field of intelligent manufacturing.

From a global layout perspective, CATL has been accelerating its expansion in overseas markets (such as its factory in Hungary) in recent years. Galaxy Universal's embodied intelligence technology can be extended to the automation upgrade of its global supply chain.

In addition, CATL has also entered the robotics field through self - research. According to media reports, CATL has established a team of dozens of people in Shanghai to conduct self - research on robot bodies, control, and human - machine interaction algorithms, and plans to manufacture industrial robots such as robotic arms and AGVs.

There are also reports that a wholly - owned subsidiary of CATL has jointly developed several robots with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is preparing for factory applications.

Plan to Open 100 Robot Pharmacies This Year

The soul figure behind Galaxy Universal is its founder and CTO, Wang He.

Born in 1992, Wang He graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree and obtained a doctorate from Stanford University. He studied under Professor Leonidas J. Guibas, a member of three US academies. In 2021, he joined the Institute of Advanced Computing at Peking University as an assistant professor, founded the Embodied Perception and Interaction Laboratory, and established and served as the director of the Embodied Intelligence Research Center at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence in 2022.

In 2023, Wang He decided to start a business. In May of the same year, he joined hands with Yao Tengzhou to jointly establish Galaxy Universal in Beijing. Yao Tengzhou graduated from the Robotics Research Institute of Beihang University with a master's degree. He studied under Professor Wang Tianmiao, a well - known figure in the industry, and once worked at the Shanghai Robotics R & D Center of ABB Group.

Since its establishment, Galaxy Universal has adopted a technical paradigm of using a simulated synthetic motion dataset for pre - training and real data for post - training, playing a leading role in the industry. The company introduced the following specific progress:

1. The world's leading embodied large - scale base model: In January 2025, the company took the lead in launching the world's first end - to - end embodied large model, GraspVLA, pre - trained on a dataset of billions of simulated synthetic motion data. This model has achieved the world's first zero - shot generalization ability only through pre - training;

2. A new breakthrough in the commercial model for the retail scenario: The company released the world's first end - to - end model for retail commercialization, GroceryVLA. It is reported that this model has solved two key challenges in the complex retail environment: full - coverage intelligent grasping and high - efficiency scene adaptation. The model has strong autonomous decision - making ability and anti - interference ability (able to handle unexpected displacement or dumping of goods), and more importantly, it is easy to deploy;

3. The implementation of a product - level navigation large model: In addition to the operation model, the company also launched a product - level end - to - end navigation large model, TrackVLA.

According to the introduction of Galaxy Universal to reporters from the Venture Capital Daily, in terms of the large - scale application and implementation of robots, Galaxy Universal has made progress in scenarios such as smart retail, industry, and health care.

Wang He also said recently, "The goal is to promote the arrival of the productivity era of humanoid robots. This year, robots have been deployed and put into actual use in pharmacies. Currently, there are seven stores operating normally in Beijing. By the end of this year, it is expected that more than 100 stores will be operating in first - tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. In these 100 stores, humanoid robots will complete automated picking 24 hours a day, which marks the beginning of the productivity era of humanoid robots."

Meanwhile, the depth of Galaxy Universal's cooperation in the automotive industry is also continuously expanding. On June 17, it announced the establishment of a joint venture with Boyuan Capital under the global industrial giant Bosch Group. This cooperation will focus on industrial manufacturing scenarios and jointly promote the exploration of commercial applications of embodied intelligent robots and their implementation in the global market.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Venture Capital Daily", author: Li Mingming, published by 36Kr with authorization.