"Star Era" Completes RMB 1 Billion Series A+ Financing Led by Geely Capital, with Commercial Orders Exceeding RMB 500 Million | Exclusive from 36Kr

Text | Qiu Xiaofen

Editor | Su Jianxun

According to exclusive information obtained by Intelligent Emergence, the embodied intelligent robot company "Star Era" has completed a Series A+ financing round worth one billion yuan.

This round of financing was led by Geely Capital, with joint investments from BAIC Industrial Investment, Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, and Beijing Robot Industry Development Investment Fund.

Since its establishment two years ago, the list of investors in "Star Era" includes several industrial capitals, such as Alibaba, Haier Capital, Lenovo, Geely, BAIC, and so on.

As orders from robot manufacturers have been surging, Intelligent Emergence has learned that the commercialization of "Star Era" is also advancing rapidly.

The company's commercial orders in 2025 exceeded 500 million yuan, and it has established in - depth cooperation with enterprises such as Geely, Renault, SF Express, TCL, Haier, and Lenovo.

Among them, in the logistics field, the largest single order of "Star Era" was nearly 50 million yuan. In the commercial service field, the robot jointly developed with Haier has entered the stores.

Xi Yue, the co - founder of "Star Era", told Intelligent Emergence that the commercialization strategy of "Star Era" is to "lay eggs along the way", seeking possibilities for robot applications in multiple scenarios at different stages of technological development.

For example, in the manufacturing field, the robots of "Star Era" can perform tasks such as parts grabbing, high - precision assembly, and quality inspection; in the commercial service field, the robots can provide services such as store guest area cleaning and tour guiding;

In the developer market, the robot products of "Star Era" have also penetrated into institutions such as ByteDance Robot Laboratory and Skild AI, participating in robot technology research and result transformation.

△ Star Era robots sorting packages at a logistics station. Image source: Provided by the enterprise

However, for robot manufacturers, standardization is a crucial step in improving commercialization efficiency. Xi Yue said that "Star Era" is currently piloting a set of standardized and reusable solutions for logistics handling and sorting in the logistics field.

Specifically, this solution is based on the full - size bipedal humanoid robot Star L7 of "Star Era", which is equipped with its end - to - end VLA embodied model ERA - 42 and integrated into the business systems of logistics customers.

For example, the robots will participate in the sorting and scanning of packages in the logistics scenario, which improves the flexibility of the logistics scenario to a certain extent. In addition, the business systems of logistics customers can also send task signals to the robot's embodied model, and the model will provide real - time feedback on the operation progress and status, avoiding the pain point of traditional logistics systems that "only know the result but not the process".

Currently, "Star Era" has established pilot projects for the implementation of this solution with several global logistics enterprises.

Not only targeting the domestic market, "Star Era" is also actively exploring overseas markets. Intelligent Emergence has learned that the products of "Star Era" have entered North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea and other regions, and overseas business accounts for 50% of the total. Currently, 9 out of the top 10 global technology companies by market value are customers of Star Era.

△ Star Era robots sorting and scanning drugs. Image source: Provided by the enterprise

While promoting commercialization, the R & D of "Star Era" in embodied intelligence and hardware is also advancing rapidly.

Last year, "Star Era" launched the first embodied brain ERA - 42 that integrates the world model and a fast - slow hierarchical architecture.

In ERA - 42, "Star Era" has extended a large amount of Internet video data to the field of embodied intelligence, enabling robots to learn physical laws and perform more refined operations.

In October this year, the "Star Era" team, in collaboration with the Chelsea Finn team from Stanford University (i.e., PI co - founders), jointly proposed the controllable generative world model "Ctrl - World", which allows robots to conduct task rehearsals, strategy evaluations, and self - iterations in the "imaginary space", increasing the task completion rate of robots in unfamiliar scenarios by 44.7%.

In terms of hardware products, the difference between "Star Era" and other robot manufacturers lies in developing robots like "Lego bricks".

In the two years since its establishment, "Star Era" has launched different robot modules, including several dexterous hands (XHAND 1, XHAND 1 Lite), the wheeled service robot Star Q5 for the service industry, the full - size bipedal robot Star L7 for the industrial field, and the half - body module Star M7.

Xi Yue told Intelligent Emergence that the purpose of modular robot development is to flexibly adjust the configuration according to the application scenario requirements of different industries.

In addition, "Star Era" also adheres to self - research in hardware, with the self - research proportion of components exceeding 95%, including core components such as joint modules, dexterous hands, and motors.

Through the layout in robot bodies and embodied intelligence, Xi Yue said that "Star Era" hopes to build a flywheel of "model - body - scenario data" in the future.

In terms of the team, Chen Jianyu, the founder of "Star Era", is a doctoral supervisor, assistant professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University, and a part - time teacher at the School of Artificial Intelligence. "Star Era" is also the only embodied intelligent enterprise in which Tsinghua University holds shares.