Striving to become the "first stock in mobile operating robots," YouiTech is reconstructing the industrial intelligent ecosystem with its "one brain, multiple states" concept.
Author | Liao Yao
Recently, Hefei Youi Intelligent Robotics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Youi Intelligent Robotics") officially submitted a listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It plans to go public through Chapter 18C of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to strive for the title of "the first listed company in the mobile manipulation robot sector".
Chapter 18C is a listing rule for specialist technology companies launched by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the beginning of 2023. It allows companies that have not achieved profitability but meet indicators such as market value and R & D investment to list on the main board.
High growth potential is the keyword for these companies. Founded by a doctoral team from Xi'an Jiaotong University, Youi Intelligent Robotics has developed into the world's highest - revenue industrial mobile manipulation robot enterprise in just eight years.
According to the Frost & Sullivan report, in terms of revenue in 2024, Youi Intelligent Robotics is the world's leading industrial mobile manipulation robot enterprise and also ranks first among mobile manipulation robot enterprises in China.
Data shows that from 2022 to 2024, Youi Intelligent Robotics' revenue soared from 80 million yuan to 250 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of up to 80%. Currently, it holds the first global market share in the semiconductor field and ranks among the top three in the global market share in the energy and chemical industry.
It is worth noting that Youi Intelligent Robotics has stood out in the highly competitive robot market. What supports it is the technical path and business model built with the goal of "creating embodied intelligent productivity to boost industrial efficiency transformation". This will also be the growth engine for releasing its potential.
Embodied Intelligence Practice in Industrial Scenarios
In fact, for robots to realize commercial value, they must go through technical verification, commercialization verification, and finally gradually move towards a large - scale business model. The whole process is gradual, starting from small - scale applications in low - level and less complex generalized scenarios and then expanding to large - scale deployment in broad scenarios.
A senior expert in the artificial intelligence and robot industry told Yingke that for companies under Chapter 18C, the core goal of development is to find the scenario space where products can exert value, integrate resources, and formulate and implement complete solutions. The mobile manipulation robot field is still in its early stage and has great growth potential in the future. However, the industry has not yet entered the stage of large - scale growth and is still in a critical period of technical verification, commercialization exploration, and expansion of segmented scenarios.
The expert also pointed out that currently, embodied intelligent robots can be roughly divided into two categories. One is the dedicated robots that have been widely used, such as pool - cleaning robots and mobile manipulation robots for transporting wafers in the semiconductor industry. The other is the general - purpose robots, such as humanoid mobile manipulation robots. Both types of robots face certain challenges in commercial applications. The former needs more generalization ability to meet the requirements of industrial scenarios, while the latter needs to meet the high requirements of the industry for consistency, safety, and reliability.
In other words, the industrial logic behind robots requires a clear business model of "technology as the foundation, scenarios as the anchor point, and value closed - loop as the core" for enterprises.
Youi Intelligent Robotics' success in becoming a global leading industrial embodied intelligent technology company is inseparable from the implementation of this business model. This model not only explains its leading position in the market but also reveals its unique positioning and long - term potential in the wave of industrial intelligence.
According to the prospectus, Youi Intelligent Robotics drives the intelligent transformation of global industrial customers through mobile manipulation robots to achieve stable, flexible, and efficient production. Currently, it provides "one - brain, multi - form" embodied intelligent robot solutions for many industries such as semiconductors, energy and chemicals, lithium batteries, 3C and other manufacturing, and public utilities. These solutions include highly generalized intelligent models and multi - form robots with perception, movement, and operation capabilities.
Youi Intelligent Robotics mainly solves the pain points in two scenarios: industrial logistics and inspection and maintenance, and focuses on the semiconductor and energy and chemical industries. Its business expansion model can be summarized as following the path of "triers → early adopters → early majority": starting with small - batch trials and then gradually expanding the scale. It also achieves continuous expansion through four dimensions: customer scenarios, customer levels, upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and technology - driven development.
Specifically, in terms of customer scenarios, it forms a complete solution coverage from 0 - 1, 1 - 10 to 10 - 100. In terms of customer levels, it extends from leading customers to mid - sized and small customers, internalizing the service experience for leading customers into standard services. In the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, in industries such as semiconductors, it extends from core links (such as wafer processing) to upstream and downstream (such as substrate and packaging industries). Driven by technology, it expands the application boundaries of robots (such as from clean workshops to the entire factory area) with embodied intelligent technology to expand the market space.
The above - mentioned expert pointed out that from Youi Intelligent Robotics' development history and strategy, it can be seen that its development is not blindly chasing hotspots. Instead, it gives priority to in - depth development in existing strategic fields and is not in a hurry to conduct large - scale cross - field cooperation. Its approach of applying new embodied intelligent technology to existing products first to expand the boundaries of solutions is to "concentrate efforts on major issues". On the one hand, the industrial chains of these two industries are huge, and there is still much room for improvement in the current exploration level. On the other hand, exploring new industries requires a lot of time and energy, and cross - field development requires a new understanding of the application value of robot scenarios, making it difficult to replicate past experience across fields.
The "technology - scenario - product" trinity development logic disclosed in the prospectus is the best manifestation of the in - depth development strategy. At the technology end, it continuously iterates in technical directions such as robot positioning with multi - modal data fusion, general embodied intelligent complex operation models with edge - cloud collaboration, modular and highly safe robot design, and full - domain logistics control technology for complex flexible manufacturing processes, and polishes its leading technical strength in depth. Then, with its profound technical accumulation, it enters high - threshold and high - market - value markets and strategically focuses on this field in application scenarios. Finally, through a large number of robot product implementation projects, it accumulates rich technical experience, which in turn feeds back into technical optimization and upgrading, driving Youi Intelligent Robotics' technological iteration cycle.
"One - Brain, Multi - Form" to Break Through in Industrial Embodied Intelligence
The global industrial embodied intelligent robots are entering a golden stage of booming development. As the main product type of embodied intelligent robots, mobile manipulation robots show a high degree of intelligence and adaptability with their combined operation and movement capabilities, releasing huge growth potential. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, the market penetration rate of the global mobile manipulation robot solution market will increase from 11.2% in 2024 to 42.7% in 2030.
Youi Intelligent Robotics is at the forefront of this trend. As one of the earliest robot manufacturers in the world to explore embodied intelligent technology and achieve large - scale application, Youi Intelligent Robotics started selling embodied intelligent products as early as 2017. Currently, its industrial embodied intelligent robot solutions are sold in more than 30 countries and regions, including China, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. Its customers cover many well - known enterprises, including the world's leading semiconductor wafer foundries, China's leading power grid groups, and energy groups.
An investor who has long been concerned about the robot field told Yingke that after humanoid robots became a hot topic, robots have gradually become a new carrier for large - model AI. The combination of the two increases the possibility of generalization and intelligent functions, making the future robot market larger and more detailed. However, the current robot technology is polarized. Humanoid robots based on model - fitting training have high generalization ability but the success rate is difficult to exceed 99%. Traditional robotic arms have high precision, consistency, and reliability but poor generalization ability. If the two are combined in different proportions to form differentiated application solutions for different segmented scenarios, the future market space will far exceed expectations.
He said that the robot industry needs to balance technological advancement and commercial practicality on the one hand, and balance standardized scale effects and in - depth customization requirements on the other hand. In other words, on the one hand, robots must become stable, reliable, and measurable advanced productive forces. On the other hand, the standardization and specialization of industrial scenarios make it difficult to complete all task divisions through a single set of software and hardware.
The ingenuity of Youi Intelligent Robotics' "one - brain, multi - form" lies in successfully solving these two core contradictions.
The "one - brain, multi - form" industrial embodied intelligent system includes a highly generalized industrial embodied intelligent model ("one brain") and various forms of embodied intelligent robots with perception + decision - making + interaction capabilities ("multi - form").
Among them, the "one brain" connects the entire chain of the embodied intelligent ecosystem from professional data - reasoning and decision - making - real - time control - scenario closed - loop - continuous learning. Through a set of general industrial intelligent brains, robots that meet various scenario requirements can cooperate with each other to complete tasks, achieving a leap - forward upgrade from single - device operation to full - scenario collaboration.
With the multi - modal perception, precise physical interaction, and autonomous decision - making capabilities of the "one brain", the lower - level "multi - form" robots can be adapted to the specific needs of different industrial scenarios such as semiconductors and energy. This enables Youi Intelligent Robotics' products to maintain both the forward - looking and unity of technology and the high specialization and reliability in specific scenarios.
At the same time, at the hardware level, Youi Intelligent Robotics strengthens the R & D of key components and focuses on the research and design of core components compatible with the "one - brain, multi - form" system, such as high - precision sensors, robot core controllers, vision domain controllers, and high - performance joint modules. It optimizes the hardware performance from the basic physical layer and then achieves deep coupling with the software layer.
The above - mentioned investor said that this is a "Lego - style" combination method, where 90% of the parts come from verified standardized modules, ensuring supply - chain efficiency and cost control, and only about 10% of customized development is required to meet the specific needs of customers. In essence, this achieves "flexible customization under large - scale production" in the industrial field, solving the "impossible triangle" problem in high - tech manufacturing.
The solution of the two contradictions has also become Youi Intelligent Robotics' core competitiveness. Firstly, under the "one - brain, multi - form" system with independently controllable underlying technology intellectual property rights, there are flexible technical combination solutions and independent business processes. Secondly, under industrial standards, it has the ability to quickly expand, extend, and try new things, and can quickly build reliable sequencing solutions, providing a foundation for exploring the market and expanding the value boundary. Thirdly, with continuous in - depth development in the focused industries, it precipitates industry know - how into software and hardware products and continuously expands the industry value boundary by quickly responding to the needs of leading customers.
In general, Youi Intelligent Robotics' model can be summarized as follows: driven by the independently controllable "one - brain, multi - form" technology as the engine and highly modular products as the carrier, it continuously builds a value closed - loop for key links in industrial scenarios, and finally achieves stable replication and growth across scenarios, industries, and regions. This makes it not only a robot company but also a "productivity solution" company deeply rooted in industrial scenarios, providing a model for hard - tech enterprises on how to achieve both technological and commercial breakthroughs.