A person born in the 1990s raised 700 million yuan in financing.
A super seed round of financing has surfaced.
According to investment news, the embodied intelligence startup Genesis AI announced the completion of a $105 million seed round of financing (approximately RMB 750 million), setting a record for the largest seed - round financing in the Silicon Valley embodied intelligence industry.
After being established for half a year, the founding team has emerged. Zhou Xian, a post - 90s who just graduated with a doctorate, joined hands with a group of young scholars to enter this hottest field.
Back in China, the field of embodied intelligence is also witnessing round after round of super - scale financing.
Elite Gathering: They Join Hands to Start a Business and Are Recruiting
Zhou Xian, the founder and CEO, is a real academic overachiever, born in 1994. At the age of 18, he was admitted to the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and graduated with the highest honors. In 2017, Zhou Xian entered Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a doctoral degree in robotics, under the tutelage of Professor Katerina Fragkiadaki.
The birth of Genesis AI dates back to 2022. By chance, Zhou Xian went to the MIT - IBM Watson AI Lab for an internship, collaborated with Professor Gan Chuang, and met his future business partners Xu Zhenjia, Wang Zunxuan, and Qiao Yiling.
At that time, they "let their imaginations run wild" and attempted complex robot operations such as latte art and interacting with smoke. Initially, they only studied simulators. It was not until ChatGPT emerged that Zhou Xian realized that effective information could be extracted from large language and vision models, and then robots could be made to try and iterate through physical simulations, relying on computing power to automatically generate robot data.
At the end of 2024, led by Zhou Xian, more than 10 research institutions including Carnegie Mellon University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, MIT, and Stanford University jointly open - sourced and released the generative physics engine Genesis, meaning "Genesis".
To put it simply, Genesis combines the physics engine with generative AI technology and can automatically generate a 4D physical world based on natural language descriptions, such as robot operation and motion strategies, character movements, and fully interactive 3D scenes. It is specifically designed for general robots, embodied intelligence, and physical AI applications.
Once released, it caused quite a stir and became the largest open - source project for embodied intelligence on GitHub. Many people said they saw the future of embodied intelligence in it.
Zhou Xian has more in mind. Now, Genesis AI has officially made its debut. The official website shows that it is a global physical AI laboratory and a full - stack robot company dedicated to building general robots that can automatically perform repetitive tasks from laboratories to households.
"Digital AI has advanced by leaps and bounds, but the intelligence that enables machines to understand and act on the real world - physical AI - has seriously lagged behind," Zhou Xian said that he will achieve the strongest physical intelligence and automate physical labor in the future.
Zhou Xian and co - founder Théophile Gervet
Currently, the company's founding team consists of about 20 people, with an average age of less than 28. The official website has opened a social recruitment channel and is still recruiting. Many founding members are from the previous Genesis project team -
Xu Zhenjia graduated with a doctorate from Columbia University/Stanford University in 2024, under the tutelage of Song Shuran, the recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship. He previously served as the person - in - charge of the real - machine system of NVIDIA's GEAR team.
Wang Zunxuan graduated with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year, under the tutelage of Daniela Rus, the director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He previously served as a research scientist for large models at Liquid AI.
Qiao Yiling graduated with a doctorate from the University of Maryland, under the tutelage of graphics master Ming C. Lin and robotics master Dinesh Manocha, and won the Meta Scholarship.
Li Minchen graduated with a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 and is an assistant professor in the field of graphics at Carnegie Mellon University.
Another co - founder also has an impressive background. Théophile Gervet, born in 1995, is an alumnus of Zhou Xian and also graduated with a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University. He was previously one of the founding members of the embodied intelligence unicorn Skild AI and also served as a former research scientist at Mistral AI.
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Investors have also arrived. This week, Genesis AI announced the completion of a $105 million seed round of financing, co - led by Khosla Ventures and Eclipse, with participation from former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, European tech tycoon Xavier Niel, the French central bank BPI, Sequoia China, etc.
This is the largest - scale seed - round financing in the Silicon Valley embodied intelligence track to date and also the largest - scale seed - round financing completed by a Chinese - led team in Silicon Valley history, surpassing the previous record of $55 million in the AI video track by Pika.
"Everything is still unknown. Who can build a general large - scale foundation model for cross - task robots? This is our investment direction," said a partner at Khosla Ventures, adding that among all the teams they have seen, they are most optimistic about the path of Genesis AI.
In 2025, Embodied Intelligence Boomed Unprecedentedly
Looking across the ocean, the embodied intelligence track in China is also witnessing a financing storm.
Just last week, Galaxy Universal announced the completion of a new round of financing, with the financing amount exceeding RMB 1.1 billion. The investors include the strategic investment arm of CATL, Puquan Capital (CATL Capital), Guokai Kechuang of the China Development Bank, the Beijing Robot Industry Fund, and GGV Capital.
Galaxy Universal was founded in May 2023, led by Wang He, a post - 90s professor from Peking University, in Haidian, Beijing. To date, the cumulative financing has exceeded RMB 2.4 billion. This round of financing is the largest single - round financing in the field of embodied large - model robots to date and has also set a record for the highest cumulative financing amount in this field.
Coincidentally, Unitree Robotics recently announced the completion of the C - round financing, co - led by a fund under China Mobile, Tencent, Jinqiu Fund, Alibaba, Ant Group, and Geely Capital, with most existing shareholders also participating. At the same time, the company completed its shareholding system reform, which is interpreted as a precursor to an IPO.
There is also Pacini. In June, Pacini announced the completion of its Series A financing. The investors include multiple well - known institutions such as TCL Capital, Yida Capital, Shangqi Capital, Cornerstone Capital, Shangtang Guoxiang, CITIC CLSA, Hunan Caixin Industry Fund, and Junxi Capital, with the cumulative financing amount reaching hundreds of millions of RMB.
2025 can truly be called the "year of robot explosion". According to incomplete statistics from investment news, as of now, there have been a total of 163 financing events related to the domestic robot track this year. Companies such as Zilliz Robotics, Qianxun Intelligence, Tashii Navigation, Fourier Intelligence, and UniX AI have all received large - scale financing this year.
The rise of the domestic robot army is clearly visible. Many industry insiders believe that China and the United States are roughly on the same starting line in AI large models and embodied intelligence. However, when it comes to mass - producing robots, China has the strongest cost - engineering capabilities and industrial integration efficiency.
As shown in the "Humanoid Robots 100" report released by Morgan Stanley, among the 100 core enterprises in the humanoid robot industry chain, 56 are from China. China has gradually formed a relatively complete ecosystem and accounts for 63% of the global industrial chain.
"Domestic robots will be at the forefront, just like the new energy industry," Ye Qian, the president of Shoucheng Capital, told investment news, adding that China has clear advantages, with huge application scenarios and rich data resources. Compared with overseas, Chinese entrepreneurs are not only competing in technology but also in delivery and scenario implementation.
Everyone wants to get a ticket to this field, but real challenges lie ahead. Despite the rapid development, embodied intelligence still needs to overcome numerous obstacles from technological maturity to commercial implementation. In the short term, patience is required, and the industry's explosion awaits the clarification of technological paths and breakthroughs in cost controllability.
However, for embodied intelligence companies, the speed of financing and the amount of funds raised will lead to further differentiation. Chen Weiguang, the managing partner of BlueRun Ventures, said bluntly that it is not too early to enter the field of embodied intelligence. "If it's too late, you'll have to compete with big companies for resources. We choose to support entrepreneurs who get on the table early."
Everything is just beginning.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Wang Lu and published by 36Kr with authorization.