Led by leading internet giants, "Critical Point" secures hundreds of millions in new financing | Exclusive from Intelligence Emergence

Author: Qiu Xiaofen

Editor: Su Jianxun

Investors' enthusiasm for robots has gradually shifted from robot bodies and embodied intelligence models to the upstream dexterous hand field.

According to exclusive information obtained by "Intelligent Emergence", the dexterous hand company "AGILINK" has completed a new round of financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan. The leading investment was made by a top - tier Internet giant, and top - tier capitals such as BV Baidu Ventures and Yunfeng Capital participated together. Industrial capitals including Synstellation Capital, Joyson Electronics, Longcheer Technology, and SAIC Financial Holdings jointly invested, and several financial institutions such as C Capital, WoFu, and MuHua followed the investment. Old shareholders such as BlueRun Ventures and Hillhouse Capital over - subscribed.

AGILINK was formerly the dexterous hand department of Zhipu Robotics. It was officially registered as an independent company in January this year and is led by Xiong Kun.

Public information shows that in 2018, Xiong Kun graduated with a master's degree from the Robotics Research Institute of the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and joined the newly - established Tencent Robotics X Lab. After leaving Tencent, in 2022, Xiong Kun joined the IDEA Research Institute and Inovance Technology successively. In November 2024, he joined Zhipu Robotics and was in charge of the dexterous hand business.

Xiong Kun, the founder of AGILINK, told "Intelligent Emergence" that the dexterous hand is a key component that requires high R & D investment. Establishing an independent company and raising funds is conducive to continuous technological investment in the future and exploring external sales opportunities.

Xiong Kun introduced to "Intelligent Emergence" that currently, robot dexterous hands can be divided into three categories:

The basic - model dexterous hands have about 6 - 10 degrees of freedom and are mainly used in robot performance scenarios. The price of a single one ranges from a few thousand yuan to 30,000 yuan.

The mid - end dexterous hands have about 11 - 17 degrees of freedom, and their selling prices range from 50,000 yuan to over 100,000 yuan.

The high - end dexterous hands generally have more than 20 degrees of freedom, and their selling prices are over 200,000 yuan. Representative manufacturers include Sharpa, Shadow, and Tesla.

According to "Intelligent Emergence", AGILINK released two dexterous hand products, OmniHand and OmniHand Pro, in 2025. Customers include not only Zhipu but also a number of embodied intelligence companies such as Lingchu Intelligence.

In 2026, AGILINK also plans to globally launch two new flagship dexterous hand products. The release and delivery of these products represent that the team's technological capabilities and mass - production and delivery capabilities have reached a leading level.

AGILINK's dexterous hand product OmniHand 2

Xiong Kun told "Intelligent Emergence" that different from previous dexterous hand startup companies that were research - oriented and did not have the ability to commercialize products in the short term, AGILINK has clearly targeted engineering, scale - up, and industrial collaboration since its establishment.

The company's products cover multiple levels, including multi - degree - of - freedom five - finger dexterous hands and cost - effective grippers, and are oriented towards:

Embodied intelligence algorithm and data collection

Humanoid robot and general robot integration

Implementation in both industrial and scientific research scenarios

Xiong Kun said that this is because AGILINK has continuously insisted on self - research in key components (motors, materials) of dexterous hands. Secondly, relying on Zhipu's supply chain also makes its dexterous hand products competitive in terms of delivery and price.

Xiong Kun told "Intelligent Emergence" that as the hardware routes of dexterous hands (such as three - dimensional touch and joint force control) continue to converge, software will become the new competitive point in the future.

Therefore, in 2026, AGILINK will also continue to increase investment in dexterous hand algorithms. For example, it will soon release a large - scale model for dexterous manipulation and a dexterous hand operation dataset with a magnitude of one million data points to help downstream robot customers train dexterous hands through reinforcement learning and other methods to more easily complete complex operation tasks.

AGILINK's dexterous hand product OmniHand Pro 4

In terms of sales volume, Xiong Kun predicted that in 2026, the increase in the shipment volume of AGILINK's dexterous hands will mainly come from two aspects:

On the one hand, the current robot industry is in the process of developing from mobile intelligence and interaction intelligence to operation intelligence. "People no longer focus on watching robots dance and perform, but need them to truly enter practical application scenarios."

Therefore, AGILINK is also planning to promote dexterous hands to new scenarios, such as fruit picking, chemical laboratories, logistics sorting, and industrial assembly.

On the other hand, Xiong Kun predicted that 2026 will be a "big year for robot data collection". A large number of humanoid robots in data collection factories are facing technological upgrades and need to transition from low - degree - of - freedom grippers to higher - degree - of - freedom dexterous hands that support more complex movements.

Xiong Kun told "Intelligent Emergence" that as a brand - new hardware category, dexterous hands face multiple technological challenges:

From the prototype to the small - scale mass - production stage, dexterous hands face challenges in performance improvement, such as refining fingertip grasping ability, repeat positioning accuracy, tactile sensor perception, and resolution accuracy.

During the stage of sprinting towards large - scale mass production, dexterous hands face core tests such as product reliability, grasping lifespan, and cost reduction.

Xiong Kun said that currently, AGILINK has passed the test of large - scale mass production. "We are the company with the richest mass - production experience in the market."

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