HSG and Hillhouse Capital have joined forces to invest in a robot.
Two top VC firms have jointly invested in a project.
On November 10th, Unbounded Dynamics, a general embodied intelligent robot company, completed its first-round angel financing of 300 million yuan. The financing was led by HSG China and Linear Capital, with follow-on investments from Hillhouse Capital Ventures, Horizon Robotics, Huaye Tiancheng, Zhongding Capital, BV Baidu Ventures, Tongge Ventures, etc. In addition, Unbounded Dynamics is close to completing its Angel+ round of financing, with the cumulative financing exceeding 500 million yuan.
In recent months, HSG and Hillhouse have jointly made investments several times. For example, they both invested in InspirAI, an AIGC startup, Touka Technology, a manufacturer of AI software and hardware products, and Xuntu Technology, a financial AI company. Another embodied intelligent enterprise jointly invested by HSG and Hillhouse is Zhipu Robotics.
This time, the company that caught the eyes of both HSG and Hillhouse is an embodied intelligent enterprise founded in March this year.
The embodied intelligent track is full of star players. For a company to attract star investment institutions and industrial capital in its first-round financing after establishment, its founding team must have an extraordinary background.
It is understood that the founding team of Unbounded Dynamics is a combination of "senior executives from large companies" that has been popular in the venture capital circle recently. Zhang Yufeng from Horizon Robotics and Xu Wenda from Didi joined hands to start their entrepreneurial journey in the field of embodied intelligence.
Currently, the public's understanding of embodied intelligence is being refreshed at an increasing pace. Both at home and abroad, there is growing recognition of the potential of embodied intelligence, an intelligent system that perceives and acts based on a physical body. In the current embodied intelligent track pursued by capital, not only have executives from Horizon Robotics entered the field, but many management personnel from large domestic companies such as Baidu, SenseTime, Alibaba, and Meituan have also flocked in.
A former vice president of Horizon Robotics starts a business, and HSG and Hillhouse are both involved
Unbounded Dynamics is not the first entrepreneurial attempt of Horizon Robotics executives in the embodied intelligent track.
Previously, Yu Yinan, the former head of intelligent driving at Horizon Robotics, left the company to found Vita Dynamics, a consumer robot company, and Sun Junkai, the former general manager of the in-vehicle intelligent interaction product line at Horizon Robotics, founded Zhizhi Future.
In March 2025, when Unbounded Dynamics was established, it wasn't long after Vita Dynamics, an embodied intelligent company founded by several former Horizon Robotics executives including Yu Yinan, made its debut.
Photo: Zhang Yufeng, Source: Unbounded Dynamics
It is understood that Zhang Yufeng, the founder of Unbounded Dynamics, has worked for global semiconductor giants such as SONY and ARM. He joined Horizon Robotics in 2017 and has served as the vice president, the president of the intelligent vehicle business unit, a director of the company, and a member of the management committee. Xu Wenda, the co-founder and CTO, is a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and a senior expert in the field of autonomous driving. He previously worked at KargoBot, an L4-level autonomous driving freight company incubated by Didi.
During his tenure at Horizon Robotics, Zhang Yufeng translated technology into business success. He led a team of thousands to achieve breakthroughs in the R & D of intelligent driving software algorithm products, rapid engineering implementation, and large-scale delivery, achieving the first market share in the assisted driving market for Chinese self-owned brand passenger cars. Paired with Xu Wenda, a technical expert, the capital has high expectations for Unbounded Dynamics.
In terms of business direction, different from Vita Dynamics founded by his former colleague Yu Yinan, which focuses on consumer-grade robots for the C-end market, Unbounded Dynamics is targeting the B-end industrial scenario.
Unbounded Dynamics focuses on building the "general brain" and "operational intelligence" of robots, breaking through the key bottlenecks in the coordination of hands, eyes, and brain, and transforming embodied intelligence into an infrastructure that can be widely deployed and continuously evolved. Unbounded Dynamics has built a dual-driven system centered on "R & D of general basic models" and "implementation of general expert models". Through the design of a hardware-software integrated architecture, it forms a closed-loop system for the continuous evolution of embodied intelligent models.
It is reported that Unbounded Dynamics has made breakthroughs in its first-generation robot platform, and its first-generation dual-arm wheeled robot products will officially enter the factory this month.
The strong technical background of the Unbounded Dynamics team has won the favor of institutions. In the angel round of financing announced today, HSG China, Linear Capital, Hillhouse Capital Ventures, Horizon Robotics, Huaye Tiancheng, Zhongding Capital, BV Baidu Ventures, Tongge Ventures, etc. jointly invested in the first-round financing, and the next round of financing has also been finalized. The total scale of the two rounds of angel financing reached 500 million yuan.
It is worth noting that among the many investment institutions, there is also the support of Horizon Robotics, Zhang Yufeng's "old employer". In the financing announcement, Yu Kai said, "He (Zhang Yufeng) leads Unbounded Dynamics to carry out systematic innovation from the underlying algorithms and architecture of embodied intelligence to engineering implementation, which is highly consistent with Horizon Robotics' concept of 'driving the intelligent era with hardware-software synergy'. I believe that under his leadership, this team with both technical depth and system-level implementation experience will inject new vitality into the embodied intelligent industry. Horizon Robotics and I will continue to support Unbounded Dynamics to jointly accelerate the arrival of the era of general embodied intelligence."
The embodied intelligent track is hot, and senior executives from large companies are flocking in
The booming embodied intelligent track has gathered many star entrepreneurs.
Within one year, there have been three embodied intelligent startups attracting market attention from Horizon Robotics alone, including Vita Dynamics, Zhizhi Future, and Unbounded Dynamics.
The appeal of embodied intelligence goes far beyond that. In 2025, the investment and financing in the field of embodied intelligence have witnessed explosive growth. Public data shows that there have been 195 financing events in the first 10 months of this year, among which 69 have a scale of over 100 million yuan. For example, Tashizhihang set a record for the angel round with a financing of 120 million US dollars, and Galaxy General completed a financing of over 1.2 billion yuan.
In 2025, the popularity of embodied intelligence has exceeded many people's expectations. From the capital winter, to the large models in the new round of AI wave, to the breakthrough of robots into the mainstream, embodied intelligence has truly reversed the situation. A number of startup companies attracting wide attention have emerged at home and abroad, and among these entrepreneurs, senior executives from large companies who have left their jobs to start businesses have formed a new force.
A few days ago, Shenpu Intelligence, a household robot company, announced that it had completed two rounds of seed financing within three months, with a cumulative amount of 200 million yuan. The fact that institutions such as Shunwei Capital, CSC Venture Capital, Junshan Capital, BV Baidu Ventures, and Qifu Capital followed the investment is closely related to Li Xiaofei, the founder of Shenpu Intelligence and the former co-founder of the autonomous driving unicorn, Zhixingzhe.
In September this year, Zhang Haixing, the former head of Tesla's China Design Center, entered the humanoid robot track with his new company, Xingji Dynamics. Zhang Haixing is the only Chinese executive invited by Elon Musk for an interview. The first humanoid robot product of Xingji Dynamics is also benchmarked against full-size humanoid robots in North America, such as those of Figure, Tesla Optimus, and 1X.
In July this year, Li Auto also contributed an embodied intelligent company. Jia Peng, the former key figure in Li Auto's intelligent driving, founded Zhijian Dynamics in Hangzhou. There is also another important figure from Li Auto's intelligent driving behind the company - Wang Kai. It is reported that Zhijian Dynamics has not yet announced its specific business direction, but there are reports that the company has completed two rounds of financing. The first round was from Yuanjing Capital, where Wang Kai serves as an investment partner, and in the second round, well - known institutions such as HSG and BlueRun Ventures also joined. The total financing amount reached 50 million US dollars.
In the embodied intelligent track, those with the "Huawei" label will not be absent. This year, Zhipu Robotics, which has been at the forefront of the capital trend, has Zhu Huijun, a "genius youth" recruited by Huawei, in its founding team. The money - attracting ability of Zhipu Robotics is obvious to all, with Hillhouse, CDH Investments, HSG, BYD, etc. successively taking stakes.
In March this year, another "Huawei - affiliated" embodied intelligent enterprise caused a stir in the capital market. Tashizhihang, an embodied intelligent system R & D enterprise founded by Chen Yilun, the former CTO of Huawei's Vehicle BU Autonomous Driving System, completed a 120 - million - US - dollar angel round of financing and then officially announced on July 8th that it had completed a 122 - million - US - dollar Angel+ round of financing. With a total financing of 242 million US dollars in five months, it instantly detonated the capital circle.
In addition, Wang Gang, the former chief scientist of the artificial intelligence laboratory and the former head of the Alibaba DAMO Academy's autonomous driving laboratory, founded Xinshengji Intelligence, a developer of commercial cleaning robots. At the end of last year, Liu Fang, the former head of Xiaomi Auto's autonomous driving product technology, left Xiaomi and founded Amiao Robotics, an embodied intelligent company focusing on the flexible production of robots in the 3C consumer electronics field. The company's two rounds of seed financing amounted to nearly 200 million yuan.
Now, entrepreneurs who are senior executives from large companies such as Alibaba, Meituan, ByteDance, Huawei, Baidu, and SenseTime and have crossed over into the field of embodied intelligence have formed a camp in the venture capital circle. In the embodied intelligent track, this group of senior executives from large companies is being pursued by capital. When facing technological breakthroughs and commercial implementation, how much impact can these star - studded entrepreneurs bring to the market?
This article is from the WeChat official account "Lieyun Selection". Author: Shao Yangang. Republished by 36Kr with permission.