Robot companies are going crazy for financing: State-owned assets from various regions are investing large sums of money. Has one company come to a halt right after a round of financing?

According to data from IT Juzi, the number of domestic robot industry financing events has been growing at an accelerating pace this year. In Q3 of 2025, there were a total of 243 investment events, a year-on-year increase of 102%. The estimated total financing amount was 19.813 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 172%.

Specifically, among the robot companies that received funding, 26 robot startups received over hundreds of millions of yuan in financing in Q3. These companies collectively accounted for 63% of the total primary market financing in the entire industry.

Taking the top 20 companies as an example, a more astonishing discovery is that 15 of the robot companies have received funds from state-owned assets to some extent recently, accounting for 75%.

Only one-fourth of the robot companies do not have state-owned asset institutions on their latest list of investors.

Here are some examples:

• Xiongan Fund invested in the unicorn enterprise "Mech-Mind Robotics".
• Hefei Binhu Jin Investment invested in Zhongqing Robot and Lingcifang Robot.
• Beijing State-owned Assets Management invested in Songyan Power Noetix and Yun-Shen-Chu Technology.
• Suzhou Fund invested in Yixing Robot...

It's not hard to see that local state-owned assets are heavily investing in the robot industry.

There are mainly two reasons for state-owned assets to invest in these robot companies:

One is to support the local robot industry with funds, mainly focusing on innovative startups. The other is to invest in established robot companies from other regions to attract them to set up operations locally, which is also a way of using equity investment for investment promotion.

Next, let's take a look at which are the top 20 robot companies with the highest financing amounts in Q3?

Image source: IT Juzi

According to statistics from IT Juzi, in Q3 of 2025, three robot companies each received approximately 1 billion yuan in financing, namely Zhongqing Robot, Xingmai Innovation, and Zibianliang Robot. In addition, Tashizhihang and Xinghaitu both announced financing of over 100 million US dollars.

Image source: Zhongqing Robot's official WeChat account

In July 2025, Zhongqing Robot completed two rounds of financing in a short period, with a total amount of nearly 1 billion yuan. In the Pre-A++ round, Xinghang Capital, established by XPeng Motors, participated in the investment. In the A1 round, JD.com led the investment, followed by financial investors such as Puquan Capital under CATL, Intime Group (Industrial Investment), Huakong Fund, and Dachen Venture Capital Guochen Fund.

The funds from this round of financing will be mainly used to promote the mass production and delivery of humanoid robots and expand the product matrix. At the same time, it will accelerate the R & D of embodied intelligence technology and its application in various scenarios, and strengthen the industrial adaptation ability based on Shenzhen's manufacturing foundation.

Image source: Xingmai Innovation's official WeChat account

In September 2025, Xingmai Innovation, which focuses on the R & D of intelligent pool cleaning robots, completed a new round of financing of 1 billion yuan. Meituan Longzhu led the investment alone, and old shareholders such as Hillhouse Ventures, Shunwei Capital, and Cathay Capital increased their investment.

This Suzhou-based enterprise, founded in 2022, focuses on the consumer-grade pool cleaning scenario. It has continuously won the favor of capital due to its high implementation potential. The funds from this round of financing will be mainly used for the R & D and iteration of new-generation products, the expansion of global sales channels and local operations, and the recruitment of top global talents. At the same time, it plans to explore new application scenarios beyond pool maintenance.

Image source: Zibianliang Robot's official WeChat account

In September 2025, Zibianliang Robot announced the completion of nearly 1 billion yuan in Series A+ financing. This round of financing was jointly led by Alibaba Cloud and Guoke Investment, followed by new and old shareholders such as China Development Financial and Sequoia China.

Zibianliang Robot uses an end-to-end unified large model as its core technology. In August, it just released its fully self-developed wheeled dual-arm humanoid robot "Quantum 2". Its five-fingered dexterous hand has 20 degrees of freedom and can be remotely controlled through exoskeleton technology. The funds from this round of financing will be entirely used for the continuous training of the general embodied intelligence basic model and the R & D and iteration of hardware products such as "Quantum 2". At the same time, it will promote the ecological implementation of its open-source model "Wall-OSS".

Image source: Tashizhihang's official WeChat account

In July 2025, Tashizhihang completed a $122 million Angel+ round of financing. This round of financing was led by Meituan Strategic Investment, followed by industrial and financial investors such as Junshan Investment, Guoji Investment, and Lingang Science and Technology Innovation Investment. Old shareholders such as Linear Capital and Xianghe Capital continued to increase their investment. The funds will be used to promote product R & D and model training and to launch a global talent recruitment plan.

Tashizhihang uses the industry's first Human-Centric embodied data engine as its core and focuses on the R & D of full-stack technologies for AI in the physical world and general robots.

Image source: Xinghaitu's official WeChat account

Xinghaitu announced the completion of Series A4 and A5 financing in July 2025, with a total amount exceeding 100 million US dollars. This round of financing was led by Meituan Longzhu and Today Capital, followed by Beijing Robot Fund.

Xinghaitu has currently released its robot product R1, which is available on JD.com. This product performs well in joint folding ability, being able to squat and stand like a human. It is suitable for multiple industries and scenarios such as industrial and service sectors.

In addition to the above representative funded enterprises, there is also a robot company founded in May this year that has experienced great ups and downs within half a year.

In September 2025, Yixing Robot completed a seed round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. Two months ago, it also announced a "friends and family round" of financing. Why did it announce two large-scale financings of hundreds of millions of yuan in less than half a year?

It turns out that Yixing Robot has a remarkable background. It was founded by Li Xingxing, the son of Li Shufu, the founder of Geely Holding Group. It has also recruited top talents from various channels in the robot industry.

However, according to a report by Liangziwei on October 16, this embodied intelligence company has been dissolved. The reason has not been announced yet. The subsequent results may be handled in two ways: one is that the original Geely-related basic platforms and businesses of the company will return to Geely Automobile Group; the other is that the embodied technology team may start a new business independently.

Finally, here are three points of summary analysis and extended thinking:

Depth of State-owned Asset Investment: Regional and Industry Layout

In the robot industry, active state-owned asset investors are represented by Beijing State-owned Assets Management, Shenzhen Capital Group, and Hefei Binhu Jin Investment. They have promoted robot investment in their respective regions, reflecting the dual logic of "state-owned assets supporting local industries + attracting enterprises from other regions to settle".

At the same time, taking the top 20 robot enterprises with the highest financing as an example, state-owned asset participation in investment is mostly concentrated in "embodied intelligence", "industrial robots", and "AI + robots", which reflects the value orientation of "policy guiding state-owned assets to invest in core technology fields" and avoids pure consumer-grade robot industries such as "pool cleaning" and "garden maintenance" that are oriented towards the overseas market.

Industry Heat Stratification: Embodied Intelligence Becomes the Absolute "Money Magnet"

Among the top 20 financing enterprises, nearly half are robot enterprises with the concept of "embodied intelligence". Except for Mech-Mind, which was founded in 2016 and then transformed, the establishment time of other embodied intelligence robot companies is basically concentrated between 2023 and 2025. Currently, the technological maturity is not high, and most of them have not achieved large-scale commercialization, presenting a pattern of "iteration of leading robot enterprises + influx of new players".

It is precisely because of the broad market prospects and growth potential that this industry has become the focus of capital, which should be the mainstream view.

However, a small number of investors have different opinions. Zhu Xiaohu is a typical example. He believes that the commercial path of embodied intelligence is still unclear. The customers are either universities, competitors, or central state-owned enterprises that buy the products for front - desk display, which is not a sustainable business model. As an angel investor in Xinghaitu, GSR Ventures withdrew from Xinghaitu in September 2024.

China-US Comparison: The Logic Behind the Significant Valuation Gap of Leading Enterprises

In the third quarter, Chinese robot unicorns that disclosed a new round of financing include Zhiyuan Robot, Unitree Robotics, Mech-Mind, and Yun-Shen-Chu. The valuations of these leading enterprises generally start at 1 billion US dollars, ranging from 1 billion to 3 billion US dollars.

In contrast, the currently popular US robot unicorn Figure AI - a company founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock, the founder of Vettery (an employee recruitment platform) and Archer Aviation (an electric aircraft eVTOL) - focuses on general humanoid robots. After completing a $1 billion Series C financing in September this year, its valuation reached $39 billion, a 15 - fold increase from last year and dozens of times the valuation of domestic enterprises in the same industry.

The core reason is that the valuation logic of US venture capital is based on industry recognition. Capital focuses on betting on trustworthy entrepreneurs and gives high valuations based on the expected global market. For example, SSI, a security artificial intelligence company founded in 2024 in the US, can be valued at $32 billion even without a product prototype, just because of the high - profile of its founder team. Such a thing hardly happens in China.

It can be seen that Chinese capital is relatively more pragmatic, following a data - based valuation system and paying more attention to the "commercialization" of intelligent robots.

This article is from the WeChat official account "IT Juzi" (ID: itjuzi521), author: Wu Meimei, published by 36Kr with authorization.