The chief researcher at Huawei Noah has also embarked on an entrepreneurial journey in embodied intelligence.

Embodied intelligence has become the hottest startup track this summer.

QbitAI exclusively learned that the Chief Researcher of Huawei's Noah's Ark Lab has just founded an embodied intelligence company.

The founder, Li Yinchuan, was the Chief Researcher at Noah's Ark Lab before leaving to start his own business. He has published more than 70 papers in total - many of which are included in top AI conferences such as NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR, and he has also obtained more than 30 patents as the first inventor. He is truly a hardcore scientist.

The location of his startup is also quite hardcore. It is based in Nanshan District, Shenzhen - the hotbed of embodied intelligence in China, well - known for its hardcore technological innovation.

The company has been established for just over a month, and it is reported that it has already secured a round of financing. The investor is Source Code Capital, which has also invested in Unitree Robotics and Galaxy Universal.

Nowadays, the wave of embodied intelligence is surging, attracting many technology experts to get involved.

Many prominent figures from Huawei are also like stars scattered in the sky, and they have now reunited in the world of embodied intelligence.

A Huawei scientist leaves to start a business

This company that has just entered the field of embodied intelligence is called "Shenzhen Nuoyin Zhixing Technology" (hereinafter referred to as "Nuoyin"). It was established on June 19, 2025 and is very "young".

According to public information, its business is positioned in household life - sized robots. As the name suggests, these are intelligent robots with a physical entity that can interact with the environment through a perception - decision - execution closed - loop. They are similar in appearance to humans and are specifically designed for household scenarios.

Existing household humanoid robots usually aim to provide companionship, entertainment, and perform household chores, which is different from industrial humanoid robots that are being piloted on assembly lines.

Industrial robots are mainly task - oriented, emphasizing perception and planning. Their design focuses on motion control accuracy, load - bearing capacity, and stability.

For household humanoid robots, the design focuses more on a lightweight structure. They need to face a more unstructured household environment, have stronger multi - task generalization ability, and require more delicate interaction capabilities, such as adding a multi - modal interaction system and a more amiable expression system.

Therefore, a common judgment in the industry is that industrial humanoid robots will be commercially launched earlier than household humanoid robots.

However, the market demand for household robots is strong. Driven by the demand for comfortable and convenient household experiences, as well as the global trends of population aging and living alone, the future scale of this market is immeasurable.

In fact, the market for household life - sized robots is now extremely hot. Many companies, including Woan Robotics and Luming Robotics incubated by Li Zexiang, the "Godfather of DJI", have reported good news of financing and filing for listing several times this year.

Image source: Woan Robotics

Even so, with the hot track and plenty of opportunities, Nuoyin doesn't lack the attention of capital.

According to insiders, in just over a month since its establishment, Nuoyin is already advancing the second round of financing, and its valuation has doubled compared to the first round.

It is reported that Source Code Capital participated in its first - round financing. In recent years, Source Code Capital has increased its investment in the embodied intelligence track and has early - stage bets on Unitree Robotics, Galaxy Universal, Yunjing Intelligence, etc.

Image source: Unitree Robotics

So, why has this newly - established startup, which has no products yet and has hardly made any waves, attracted the attention of the investment market so early?

The answer may lie in the company's founder - Li Yinchuan.

He is a scientist from Huawei. He joined Huawei's Noah's Ark Lab in September 2020 and has successively served as the Chief AI Researcher of the lab and the project manager of the generative model theory project team.

In addition, under Nuoyin Zhixing Technology, there are two controlling enterprises, namely Shenzhen Nuoyin Intelligence Co., Ltd. and Beijing Nuoyin Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd., both of which were established recently, and the actual controller of both is Li Yinchuan.

There are reports that Nuoyin also has a co - founder from DJI.

In the public information of Nuoyin, a person named Wang Yunjie appears in the shareholder list...

In a patent application of DJI, there is also a person with the same name: Wang Yunjie. So it is speculated that this co - founder from DJI may be Wang Yunjie.

Like other entrepreneurs from DJI, Wang Yunjie is extremely low - key. There is not much information about him, and there is no more introduction in the public information.

In contrast, there is much more information about Li Yinchuan's resume and public data.

Before joining Huawei, Li Yinchuan pursued a doctoral degree at Beijing Institute of Technology and was also a jointly - trained doctoral student at Columbia University in the United States. His research direction was electrical engineering, but his areas of interest are quite extensive.

On Li Yinchuan's Google Scholar page, more than 70 papers he published from 2017 to 2025 are recorded. Many of them were published in top AI conferences such as NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR, and he has more than 30 patents as the first inventor.

His research directions mainly include federated learning, generative flow networks and decision - making modeling, signal processing and radar communication, finance and quantitative investment, and multi - modal and robot agent systems.

Through these papers, we can actually sort out the shift of his research directions over the years and roughly sense the nodes of the changes in his whereabouts and even his mental journey before leaving to start his own business.

Before 2019, Li Yinchuan mainly studied radar imaging and signal processing, which corresponds to his doctoral studies.

After graduating from Beijing Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in 2015, he chose to continue his doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor Ding Zegang. Professor Ding is the deputy dean of the Radar Technology Research Institute at BIT and has long been engaged in the research of radar imaging processing technology.

Ding Zegang

In 2017, as a jointly - trained doctoral student, Li Yinchuan continued his doctoral studies at Columbia University under the tutelage of Professor Wang Xiaodong from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. The latter is an IEEE Fellow and an internationally renowned expert in the field of wireless communication and signal processing.

Wang Xiaodong

For some time after 2019, Li Yinchuan's research began to involve financial forecasting.

This period corresponds to the time after his doctoral graduation when he served as a senior technical advisor at the US venture capital firm Santé Ventures, leading a team to develop a reinforcement learning system for financial stock investment from scratch.

In 2020, the same year when Li Yinchuan joined Huawei's Noah's Ark Lab, his paper research direction gradually shifted to federated learning, and at the same time, he began to explore the privacy and security of AI models and distributed training frameworks.

By 2023, federated learning had become his main research area, and it is also the paper research direction with the most citations for Li Yinchuan.

The most - cited paper is "Personalized Federated Learning via Variational Bayesian Inference" published in 2022, with 131 citations.

From 2023 to 2025, his research papers began to show more generative decision - making results, and then he focused on embodied intelligence and autonomous agents.

During this period, his role at Huawei also increased. He became the project manager of the generative model theory project team, and his research directions included embodied intelligence, generative models, and complex reasoning of large models.

This recent public experience may also have become the catalyst for his venture into embodied intelligence.

Robots, or more precisely, embodied intelligent robots, have never been more popular than they are now.

And different from the past, the startup world of embodied intelligent robots is now crowded with "Huawei people".

The Huawei - affiliated entrepreneurs in the world of embodied intelligence

In today's world of embodied intelligence, the "Huawei - affiliated" entrepreneurs are more prominent than in any previous startup era.

Among them, two companies have the highest "Huawei content".

One is called ZhiYuan Robotics.

The other is Tashi Zhihang.

ZhiYuan Robotics was initially well - known for ZhiHuiJun (Peng Zhihui), a well - known hardcore UP master on Bilibili. He joined Huawei as a "Genius Teenager" of Huawei in 2020. Later, he worked as an expert in the Ascend AI edge computing business and was once praised by Ren Zhengfei as "the driving force of Huawei's innovation".

ZhiHuiJun is the co - founder of ZhiYuan and currently serves as the CTO.

There is also a low - key but crucial Huawei executive behind it - Deng Taihua, the chairman and CEO of ZhiYuan. He was formerly the vice - president of Huawei and the former president of the computing product line. In the early years, he was also in charge of Huawei's ace business, the wireless product line (communication base stations, such as 5G, etc.).

Deng Taihua has also gathered a large number of Huawei's business executives and key personnel.

Qiu Heng, the chief operating officer of ZhiYuan Robotics, was previously the chief operating officer of Huawei's enterprise business, the president of the global market business, and also served as the president of the marketing operation department of Huawei's wireless network product line.

Jiang Qingsong, the partner and vice - president of marketing of ZhiYuan, was the former head of the product management department of Huawei's P&S (Product and Solution).

If ZhiYuan is a gathering of Huawei's business executives, then Tashi Zhihang is a team of Huawei's technical experts.

Tashi Zhihang made its public debut in March 2025, but it was a rising star from the start. Its first - round angel financing set a new industry record with a financing amount of $120 million. And because the financing round ended so quickly, investors who missed out launched a $122 - million "Angel +" round. Just based on the team, it attracted $242 million, which is quite extraordinary.

What kind of team does Tashi Zhihang have?

The chairman, Li Zhenyu, was engaged in network technology R & D at Huawei in the early years and won Huawei's highest honor award. Later, he served as the senior vice - president of