Behind the largest financing for humanoid robots, a major order worth 700 million was also secured.
Humanoid robots have received a powerful boost.
Touzhongwang learned that Galaxy Universal has completed a new round of financing with a scale of over $300 million (approximately over 2.1 billion RMB). Its post - investment valuation exceeds $3 billion (over 20 billion RMB). These two figures mean that both the single - largest financing amount and the valuation ceiling in the domestic humanoid robot track have been refreshed.
Looking at the investors, this round of financing was led by China Mobile Chain - Leader Fund. Investment platforms and industrial giants such as CICC Capital, Chinese Academy of Sciences Fund, Suzhou Venture Capital, CCTV Media Convergence Fund, and Tianqi Co., Ltd., as well as international investment institutions from Singapore and the Middle East, have also participated, along with additional investments from old shareholders.
Compared with the previous round of financing in June, which was led by CATL and Puquan Capital, the lineup of investors has changed significantly and become more diversified. The long - rumored Middle Eastern capital has finally entered the picture. It can be seen that Galaxy Universal is trying to build its international shareholder ecosystem. After CATL, another large state - owned enterprise, China Mobile, has joined the fray.
As of now, Galaxy Universal has accumulated approximately $800 million (about 5.6 billion RMB) in financing, while this figure was only 2.4 billion RMB half a year ago. For some unknown reason, Galaxy Universal also has a large - scale financing yet to be announced.
In addition, Touzhongwang exclusively learned that Galaxy Universal has signed a purchase contract for 1,000 units of G1 robots with a single industrial partner. If calculated based on the approximate selling price of 700,000 RMB per G1 robot, the contract value will reach 700 million RMB.
What does a 700 - million - RMB order mean? You should know that the annual revenues of Yushu and Zhiyuan, two leading companies in the industry, may be around 1 billion RMB in 2025. A 700 - million - RMB order from an industrial partner might be the direct reason for this record - breaking financing.
Before this 700 - million - RMB order, Ubtech just signed a large - scale contract worth 264 million RMB with the Guangxi Fangchenggang Humanoid Robot Data Collection and Testing Center, setting a record for the world's largest single - order for humanoid robots. In July, Yushu and Zhiyuan jointly won a 124 - million - RMB OEM contract for bipedal humanoid robots from China Mobile. Now, Galaxy Universal seems to be telling everyone that high prices are justified, and good products will find buyers.
This is why I say that this track is increasingly about "pattern, scale, and certainty". Companies like Galaxy Universal, Zhiyuan, Yushu, and Ubtech have clearly sent a signal to the market. Humanoid robots can still appear in various shows, press conferences, and laboratories, but there are already people spending large sums of money to bring them into factories.
Therefore, for an industry where commercialization is difficult to achieve, continuous market - based orders are like a starting gun. For example, when evaluating GPUs, an important dimension is whether there are large Internet companies as major customers and whether domestic chips can meet the computing power requirements of these large companies. That's why you've seen the market's attitude towards Moore and Muxi change in just over a year.
For robots, the "big players" are the leading manufacturing enterprises. In addition to the above 700 - million - RMB order, Galaxy Universal has won orders for thousands of units from companies including CATL, Bosch Group, Toyota Motor, Hyundai Motor, BAIC Group, SAIC Group, Geely Zeekr, and Great Wall Motor. This list of customers is quite convincing. In particular, Galaxy Universal is currently the only embodied intelligence company invested in by CATL.
The Dividend of Overseas Capital
Let's take a closer look at the new shareholders, including China Mobile Chain - Leader Fund, CICC Capital, Chinese Academy of Sciences Fund, Suzhou Venture Capital, CCTV Media Convergence Fund, and Tianqi Co., Ltd. We'll discuss them one by one.
As the leading investor, China Mobile launched the Chain - Leader Fund at the end of 2013, targeting the "9 + 6" strategy and future industries, focusing on core tracks such as AI +, humanoid robots, computing power networks, and 5G/6G. The embodied intelligence companies it has invested in, including Galaxy Universal and Daimeng Robotics, are all recent investments this month. Earlier, China Mobile also provided OEM orders to Zhiyuan and Yushu.
It's not just China Mobile. China Unicom and China Telecom have also taken actions. For example, they recently jointly participated in the Series C financing of Yun Shen Chu with an amount of over 500 million RMB. Objectively speaking, responding to the national strategic plan is obviously the underlying logic for operators to participate in the humanoid robot industry. However, since humanoid robots are regarded as the future mobile terminals by various capitals, the major operators have no reason not to occupy this ecological niche and safeguard their basic market share.
As a financial investment institution, CICC Capital led a nearly 200 - million - RMB Pre - Series B + round of financing for Songyan Power in November and also participated in the establishment of the first intelligent robot industry fund in Jiangxi Province. Backed by CICC and considering the preferences of brokerage - affiliated institutions, we have reason to speculate that in addition to financial returns, the humanoid robot companies "favored" by them are all potential candidates for IPO.
Two weeks ago, Galaxy Universal completed its shareholding reform and was reported to be planning to go public in Hong Kong in the first quarter of next year at a valuation of $4 billion. However, Galaxy Universal responded that the listing information was false and that there is still no clear schedule. The shareholding reform was necessary for the company's financing needs; otherwise, it would be unable to introduce new investors.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences Fund is strong in industrial chain investment and technology achievement transformation within the Chinese Academy of Sciences system. With institutions such as the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the technology source, it can provide core algorithm and ontology design support for Galaxy Universal. The "Ge Wu" project under its umbrella and Galaxy Universal's technical route, namely simulation data training, are likely to have certain synergies.
In April this year, Galaxy Universal established a R & D, testing, and application center, as well as an industrialization base in Suzhou, thus constructing a cooperation system of "3 centers + 1 base". Therefore, it's not surprising that Suzhou Venture Capital, as the manager of Suzhou's state - owned assets, has entered the picture.
In March this year, Suzhou Venture Capital initiated a 10 - billion - RMB embodied intelligence fund, which is at the top level in China. Recently, it participated in the investment in Shihang Intelligence, an underwater robot company favored by Zhu Xiaohu. Galaxy Universal is a leading company in embodied intelligence, while Shihang Intelligence is a typical example of rapid robot commercialization. Obviously, Suzhou Venture Capital aims to "grasp both ends".
Since Yushu's performance at the Spring Festival Gala opened up the imagination of robot performances, the CCTV Media Convergence Fund has been actively involved in the humanoid robot industry, investing in companies such as Yun Shen Chu, Songyan Power, and Zhongqing Robotics. It's reasonable to infer that robots will also appear at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Horse.
Tianqi Co., Ltd. is a listed company on the A - share market, serving customers such as Li Auto, BYD, Tesla, and Toyota. It established its humanoid robot division in 2025, which is currently one of its three core businesses. It has a deep partnership with Galaxy Universal and jointly established Wuxi Tianqi Galaxy Robot Co., Ltd. in February. In addition, it is cooperating with Foxconn New Energy and will deploy no less than 2,000 embodied intelligence robots within five years. Its participation in the investment in Galaxy Universal finally makes the long - rumored cooperation a reality.
Similarly, the long - rumored investment from the Middle East in Chinese technology assets, especially robots, has finally materialized. An investor once described an interesting story: a Middle Eastern prince flew specifically to Shenzhen to discuss financing with a robot company and rented the largest banquet hall in a luxury hotel in Shenzhen, but actually, one table was enough for everyone.
Recently, there have been continuous reports of Middle Eastern funds increasing their investment in Chinese robot companies. Just last week, Digua Robotics completed a Series B financing of hundreds of millions of dollars, with Prosperity7 Ventures (P7), a venture capital fund under the global energy giant Saudi Aramco, on the list of investors. Stone Venture from Dubai led the Pre - Series A financing of Zhongqing Robotics in April 2025 and increased its investment in the Series A2 round this month. In September this year, Infini Capital with Abu Dhabi background provided a $1 - billion financing credit to Ubtech.
The Middle East's enthusiasm for robots stems from the urgent need for national transformation. For example, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have respectively formulated the "Vision 2030" and the "AI Strategy 2031" plans, aiming to reduce their dependence on oil in GDP by developing the artificial intelligence industry. They achieve this by setting up funds worth billions or even tens of billions of dollars, led by sovereign wealth funds such as PIF, to search for high - quality technology assets globally for investment. This also includes the Singaporean investment institutions on the list of Galaxy Universal's new shareholders, which is obviously a wave of dividends for Chinese robot companies.
The Most Valuable Humanoid Robot Company
With a valuation of over 20 billion RMB, Galaxy Universal has become the most valuable humanoid robot company in China at present.
Currently, Galaxy Universal's products are mainly focused on industries such as industrial manufacturing, instant retail, and medical care, and have been operating stably 24/7 for one year in some scenarios. In June this year, they released the industry's first embodied intelligence large - scale model for retail, GroceryVLA, and a navigation large - scale model, TrackVLA. Recently, they also introduced NavFoM, the world's first large - scale navigation base model that is cross - ontology and all - around panoramic.
For a long time, the movement of robots has been based on "tracking" a preset map, similar to running on a track. NavFoM aims to achieve autonomous navigation and dynamic obstacle avoidance in complex and dynamic scenarios and has taken the lead in the industry to break through the "hour - long long - range navigation" challenge. This is a real make - or - break threshold for entering complex industrial and retail environments.
Another notable achievement of Galaxy Universal is its breakthrough in "dexterous manipulation". After all, it is rumored that the difficulty of Tesla's robot development is due to the design of its "hands". According to the dexterous hand neurodynamics model DexNDM released by Galaxy Universal, traditional trajectory programming cannot handle complex physical interactions. Galaxy Universal is trying to use a training - based control algorithm to enable the dexterous hand to perform precise operations on extremely long or tiny objects, and even "repair table legs and tighten screws".
Galaxy Universal's core concept is "Sim - to - Real". By constructing a virtual environment, it trains robots in the digital world and then transfers them to the real world. The advantage of this approach is rapid iteration, but the challenges are also obvious. The complexity of the real physical world, such as dust on sensors, drastic changes in light, and fluctuations in ground friction, is often difficult to fully simulate in a virtual environment.
Beyond the technical perspective, let's finally discuss the humanoid robot industry from the capital perspective. If we were to vote on the track that has lasted the longest and gathered the most consensus in the past year or so, embodied intelligence might receive the most votes. However, the non - consensus has not subsided; instead, it has returned in a more complex form, similar to the situation in 2023.
A state - owned asset investor told me that a leading embodied intelligence company has encountered difficulties in recent financing rounds. Saying "difficulties" might be an understatement. The general situation is that since the leading company has opened a financing window, it has set many additional conditions. Valuation is one aspect, and there are also many supporting "requirements". After evaluation, state - owned assets from several cities have chosen to back out.
According to data from Touzhongjiachuan CVSource, leading companies account for 40% of the industry's annual financing amount. The overall entrepreneurial activity in the industry remains high, and the number of companies receiving financing and the scale of financing continue to increase year - on - year. These are irrefutable facts at the data level.
I wrote in "The Founder of Embodied Intelligence Came to Interview with Me" that while resources in the humanoid robot body track are increasingly concentrated in leading companies, you can also clearly see that the risk awareness of various investors is constantly increasing. Group investment means that investors have gradually shifted from focusing on the people, technology, and development routes a year ago to considering the pattern, scale, and certainty.
Of course, if you observe other robot companies with relatively large financing scales recently, you will probably get a longer list of shareholders. These phenomena indicate that there are still continuous new entrants, the industry remains enthusiastic, the resource - linking ability is still strengthening, and leading companies are still in a seller's market. But most importantly, the FOMO (fear of missing out) era is over. Except for the secondary market, there is really not much "blind" hot money left. To stay in the game, the only way might be to raise more funds. It seems that Galaxy Universal has a greater chance of staying in the game now.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Touzhongwang", written by Zhang Nan and Cao Weiyu, and is published by 36Kr with permission.