Sequoia and Hillhouse jointly invest in a startup project led by senior executives.

Currently, embodied intelligence has entered an accelerated development phase. However, industry consensus indicates that it will take more than a decade to achieve full generalizability. Compared with pursuing an all - powerful model in one go, a more feasible development path is to first achieve "industry - level generalization" in vertical fields and then gradually expand the generalization ability.

Embodied intelligence welcomes new entrants.

Recently, Boundless Dynamics, a general embodied intelligent robot company, announced the completion of its first - round angel financing of 300 million yuan. The financing was led by Sequoia China and Linear Capital, with participation from Hillhouse, Horizon Robotics, Huaye Tiancheng, Zhongding Capital, BV Baidu Ventures, Tongge Venture Capital and others.

The reporter from Venture Capital Daily further learned from Boundless Dynamics that the company's Angel + round of financing is also nearing completion. The cumulative financing amount of the angel - round series will exceed 500 million yuan.

The founder was once the vice - president of Horizon Robotics

Founded in Beijing in 2025, Boundless Dynamics focuses on building the "general brain" and "operational intelligence" of robots. Driven by both the research and development of general basic models and the implementation of general expert models, it is committed to providing a reliable, hardware - software integrated embodied intelligence solution.

According to the introduction of Boundless Dynamics to the reporter from Venture Capital Daily, Zhang Yufeng, the founder and CEO of the company, is a cross - border entrepreneur with both in - depth technical knowledge and engineering management capabilities. He has successively engaged in R & D management at the global headquarters of top - tier technology companies such as Sony and ARM.

In 2017, Zhang Yufeng joined Horizon Robotics and served as the vice - president and the president of the intelligent vehicle business unit. During this period, he achieved the first - place market share in the assisted - driving market for Chinese self - owned brand passenger cars and led multiple strategic partnerships with leading domestic and foreign enterprises such as BYD, Changan Automobile, Volkswagen Group and Continental Group.

Currently, Boundless Dynamics has assembled a core team with the ability of cutting - edge technological innovation and engineering implementation. Xu Wenda, the co - founder and CTO, is a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. During his Ph.D. studies, he co - founded an autonomous driving algorithm company, Ottomatika, in the United States and led the world's first commercial operation of autonomous ride - hailing services. Later, he served as the vice - president of autonomous driving and the chief algorithm architect at Karl Dynamics.

Regarding this round of financing, Zhang Yufeng said that the financing will significantly accelerate the dual - path development of basic model R & D and expert model implementation, enabling the team to firmly promote the long - term evolution of the general operational brain. In the future, Boundless Dynamics will continue to focus on the R & D and iteration of basic models driven by high - value scenarios.

Zhang Han, a partner at Sequoia China, the lead investor in this round, said that he has long been concerned about the development and evolution of embodied intelligence. He attaches more importance to identifying who can truly connect the chain of "from technology to product, from product to delivery, and from delivery to scale" during the stage when the technology is not yet mature and is rapidly iterating. The Boundless Dynamics team has experience and potential in engineering implementation and business ecosystem construction, and has the opportunity to implement leading applications in specific scenarios.

Sequoia and Hillhouse jointly bet on the sector

The reporter from Venture Capital Daily noticed that Sequoia China and Hillhouse jointly participated in this round of angel financing. In recent years, both institutions have actively invested in the embodied intelligence sector.

Sequoia China is an investment institution that entered the embodied intelligence field early and has a wide - ranging layout. Its investments cover multiple tracks such as humanoid robots and industrial robots, including both early - stage startups and star companies in the growth stage.

In September 2025, Sequoia China participated as a follow - on investor in the nearly 1 - billion - yuan Series A+ financing of Independent Variable Robotics. It also jointly invested with Hillhouse Venture Capital in ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS, a company whose business covers embodied intelligent robots and general embodied base models and is one of the core participants in technological R & D and scenario implementation in this field. In addition, Sequoia China's Seed Fund has continuously supported Unitree Technology since its Pre - A round in 2020, witnessing its expansion from quadruped robots to humanoid robots and from industrial - grade to consumer - grade robots.

Moreover, Sequoia China has also invested in several companies such as Agile Robots (intelligent force - controlled robotic arms) and Fourier Intelligence (rehabilitation robots). Although these companies focus on specific scenarios, their core technologies are deeply related to the key aspects of embodied intelligence, such as perception, decision - making and execution, jointly forming a diversified investment ecosystem in the embodied intelligence field.

Hillhouse's layout in embodied intelligence is not a single - point investment but forms a pattern of fund linkage and full - industry - chain coverage, with investments spanning from upstream core components to downstream end - user applications. It also deepens the ecosystem construction through jointly established funds.

In July 2025, Hillhouse established Shanghai Lingzhi New Creation Venture Capital Partnership. In September, ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS became a limited partner of this fund. Public information shows that the fund has already invested in projects such as Fuxing Electromechanical and Qianjue Robotics. In addition, Hillhouse and ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS have jointly invested in projects such as Lingchu Intelligence and xdream robotics.

The first - generation robots have achieved breakthroughs in industrial manufacturing and other fields

An executive in the embodied intelligence field analyzed to the reporter from Venture Capital Daily that the field has currently entered an accelerated development phase. However, industry consensus indicates that it will take more than a decade to achieve full generalizability. Compared with pursuing an all - powerful model in one go, a more feasible development path is to first achieve "industry - level generalization" in vertical fields and then gradually expand the generalization ability. The current industry is at a critical turning point from laboratory demonstrations to real - world scenario value transformation, and the generalization ability and execution success rate of existing general models in real - world scenarios have not yet reached the standard for commercial deployment.

To address this challenge, as a rising star in the embodied intelligence field, Boundless Dynamics told the reporter from Venture Capital Daily that in terms of basic models, the company is systematically promoting algorithm architecture innovation and model iteration. That is, a general embodied model that can truly "understand" the physical world and drive robots to complete complex tasks across different scenarios not only needs to accurately perceive multi - modal information and spatio - temporal changes in 3D space but also achieve real - time reasoning and decision - making in complex dynamic environments, and ultimately acquire the core ability of "learning to learn".

Facing the data challenges that trouble embodied models, while pursuing data breadth through methods such as simulation and Internet videos, Boundless Dynamics focuses on systematic practices in "real machines, real people, and real environments". In real - world environments such as factory production lines and commercial spaces, it obtains accurate physical interaction data through real - machine operation and conducts lightweight and flexible data collection with the help of real - person demonstrations.

In addition, Boundless Dynamics said that to support data acquisition and the innovation, iteration and verification of basic models, it is building a closed - loop evolution system driven by both "general basic model R & D" and "general expert model implementation" to achieve large - scale implementation of general expert models with commercial - grade task success rates.

It is reported that the company's first - generation robot platform has currently achieved substantial breakthroughs in two major fields: industrial manufacturing and commercial services. It has started in - depth exploration of scenario implementation with internationally renowned partners and will enter factories this month.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Venture Capital Daily". The author is Li Mingming. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.