Sequoia Seed-led Joint Module Company Secures Half of Embodied Intelligence Whole-machine Manufacturers' Customers in 18 Months

The company adopts the standard product shipment model rather than customized delivery.

Text | Fu Chong

Editor | Su Jianxun

One-sentence Introduction

Spirit Foot Era was founded in November 2023, with the industrial application of integrated joint modules as its main business. Currently, nearly half of the domestic embodied intelligence whole - machine manufacturers are its customers.

Image: Provided by the enterprise

Team Introduction

CEO Wang Bo graduated from the Automation major of Harbin Institute of Technology and has over 10 years of experience in joint motor system development. He served as the general person - in - charge of the Xiaomi robot joint team and the general architect of Xiaomi robot joints, and won the annual technology award of Xiaomi Group.

COO Shao Yuanxin graduated from the Electronic Engineering and Management major of King's College London and has rich experience in smartphone overseas expansion and bionic robot mass production. He served as the person - in - charge of quadruped robot and joint projects and won the annual technology award of Xiaomi Group.

Many of the company's quality, hardware, and software managers have previously worked in leading listed companies and enterprises in the 3C consumer and industrial fields such as Xiaomi, Roborock, and China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation.

Financing Progress

Currently, the company has completed two consecutive rounds of financing of tens of millions of yuan in Pre - A & Pre - A+. The Pre - A round was led by Sequoia China Seed Fund, followed by Honghui Fund and Xingniu Capital. Old shareholders Innoangel Fund and Yiwei Capital made additional investments.

The Pre - A+ round was exclusively invested by Honghui. With a total financing of tens of millions of yuan, Lingxiao Capital serves as the long - term exclusive financial advisor.

Products and Business

Spirit Foot Era's integrated joint module products include the flagship series RobStride and the upcoming developer series EduLite. The company's product strategy adopts the standard product shipment model rather than customized delivery.

The company's standard products are rapidly iterated according to scenarios and requirements. All firmware - based OTAs have an average of one version per week, and the hardware is iterated with a new version launched on average every quarter.

Among them, the RobStride series mainly includes flagship - series standard integrated joint module products in the range of 1.5N.m - 120N.m.

The upcoming EduLite developer series joint modules and open - source robot hardware products are mainly used to support the construction of the robot developer ecosystem.

Since its establishment one and a half years ago, Spirit Foot Era has launched 7 mass - produced integrated joint modules, with an average of one new product launched per quarter. It plans to launch 3 - 4 mass - produced new products successively in the second half of 2025.

Image: Provided by the enterprise

Core Barriers

Spirit Foot Era's joint module products have three advantages: reliability, consistency, and developer ecosystem.

The flagship RobStribe product uses alloy steel, and all the shell support parts are integrally formed by aluminum die - casting. The gear process adopts post - die - casting treatment, so it can achieve very high strength.

For Spirit Foot Era, the core asset is the self - developed POMA technical architecture. This architecture can ensure the rapid iteration of products and industry - leading reliability, consistency, and production yield.

A "family portrait" of Spirit Foot Era's products. Image: Provided by the enterprise

Founder's Thoughts

1. From a 5 - 10 - year or even longer time perspective, we are optimistic about embodied intelligence, but we expect that there may be "fluctuations" in the industry next year.

The reason is that the current mainstream embodied brain technology paradigm still requires a large amount of time to collect data to verify its feasibility.

Although some embodied intelligence companies have received commercial orders for factory operations, there is still the problem of high deployment costs. In addition to the product procurement cost, there are also costs for operation, maintenance, and after - sales. Therefore, in addition to breakthroughs in the technology itself, industrialization still takes some time.

In order to survive such an industry fluctuation cycle and believing that robot joint technology can serve other industries, Spirit Foot Era must horizontally seek customers in other industries to form a stable cash flow for the company.

Spirit Foot Era's embodied intelligence - related business accounts for about 30% - 40% of the total revenue. Since we mainly sell standard products, the products can be sold to fields other than embodied intelligence. The remaining customers come from industries such as electric vehicles, pool robots, and industrial automation.

In addition, we are also making diversified layouts in directions such as overseas expansion. Currently, the robot hardware ecosystem still centers around Chinese enterprises. In particular, Chinese joint module enterprises have significant advantages in global competition. Therefore, from day one, Spirit Foot has adhered to overseas business and global local - based layout.

The RobStride 05 joint produced by Spirit Foot Era. Image: Provided by the enterprise

2. In addition to industrial applications, in order to enable every engineer to develop their own robots, we are about to launch the EduLite series for individual developers.

This series is positioned as a "youth version", with the same performance as the flagship version but at half the price of the flagship version.

The EduLite series will be released as an open - source project to facilitate users' better DIY. All the structural part designs of this series support 3D printing, and all the consumable parts are standard products that can be bought in online malls.

In this way, with a PC, a 3D printer, and the joint modules purchased from us, individual developers can build their own robot or AI hardware development environment.

To reduce costs, EduLite will make differential choices in materials and processes for gears, shells, etc. (such as powder metallurgy, engineering plastics, etc.). The "youth version" guarantees the same product capabilities as the "flagship version" but does not promise to achieve the same lifespan under extreme and long - term working conditions. Therefore, we do not recommend that industrial users use the EduLite series to develop industrial - grade products.

Currently, nearly 30% of Spirit Foot Era's revenue comes from retail business targeting individual developers. Many of them have made very delicate humanoid robots, robotic arms, racing car/airplane simulators through DIY, and their control algorithms are also very excellent.

According to our statistics, the number of individual hardware developers globally is about 6 million. The EduLite series is designed for such usage scenarios as "home play, teaching experiments, and rapid verification".

3. Spirit Foot Era attaches great importance to the engineer ecosystem and adopts a strategy of "being partners with engineers" like NVIDIA.

At the beginning of the company's establishment, we participated in technical discussions on technology platforms such as Github and Hugging face, actively asking questions and providing answers to build a private community with young engineers as seed users. We also provide product support for qualified individual entrepreneurs and incubate their startup projects.

This brings two benefits to Spirit Foot Era:

First, after front - line engineer friends try out Spirit Foot Era's products, they will feedback their usage experiences and suggestions, which helps us with better product R & D. Some young developers have used Spirit Foot Era's products during their school days, or some engineers have tried and become familiar with our products and left a good impression. If they have a demand for bulk use, they will also give priority to purchasing our products.

Second, younger developers will also help us update our cognition. For example, in 2019, the industry consensus was to regard reinforcement learning as a simulation tool, not as a technology that plays a very important role in robot training. However, after Spirit Foot Era's startup in 2024, more and more new - generation embodied intelligence technology talents have feedback to us that "pure reinforcement learning" has become an important technological path, which helps me significantly upgrade my cognition.

Therefore, products like EduLite can connect younger developer groups with cutting - edge technologies and also feed back to our product roadmap.

4. Regarding how to evaluate a good joint module, the most basic thing is to look at its parameters, such as response time, peak torque duration, working efficiency after thermal equilibrium, power density/torque density, etc. These are industry - recognized indicators.

But more importantly, it is necessary to look at the engineering level, especially reliability and consistency. For example, reliability means that for a robot with more than 20 joints, not only does each joint need to meet the parameter standards, but they also cannot "fail" during coordination.

Consistency means that during mass production, the quality should be as stable as the demo. Reliability and consistency come from systematic testing and the manufacturing process, and this part is the "long - term asset".

The RobStride 02 joint produced by Spirit Foot Era. Image: Provided by the enterprise

5. Cost is designed, not managed. By removing redundancy through structural design and process selection, the cost is naturally lower.

Supply chain partners should be allowed to have reasonable profits, rather than relying on price - cutting to obtain short - term low prices. Otherwise, delivery and quality will backfire.

6. The common challenge for joint module enterprises in the current embodied intelligence field lies in how to expand customers.

The current embodied intelligence industry is still in its early stage, and the overall scale of the industry is not large. Therefore, finding applications in other scenarios to ensure the long - term operation of the company is very important.

In the long run, leading ontology companies tend to develop joints in - house, while brain and intelligent product companies tend to choose supply chain partners with strong supply capabilities and better reliability and consistency.

For specific companies, currently, Spirit Foot has an advantage in engineering capabilities, but in the long run, the difference in engineering capabilities among leading joint module companies will not be very significant.

So our next challenge is to strive for technological leadership through R & D. For example, on the premise of "engineering reliability", find better - performing materials and configurations, establish a complete user ecosystem, and form comprehensive barriers that are difficult to replicate in the short term.