A post-90s graduate from Tsinghua University has just raised another 1 billion yuan.

The first billion-yuan embodied unicorn of the new year has been born.

According to investment circles, today (February 11), Xinghai Tu announced the completion of a 1 billion yuan Series B financing. The list of investors is impressive, including leading industrial capital such as Jinding Capital, BAIC Capital, and Bihong Investment; PE funds such as Zhengxin Valley Capital, Qianhai Ark, and the international fund Yifeng Capital; and five major existing shareholders, including Cathay Capital, Meituan Longzhu, Capital Today, Xianghe Capital, and Hillhouse Ventures, jointly oversubscribed or fully subscribed for additional shares.

So far, Xinghai Tu has raised nearly 3 billion yuan in total and is valued at 10 billion yuan, becoming another billion-yuan unicorn in the embodied intelligence industry after Unitree Technology, Zhipu Robotics, and Galaxy Universal.

Led by a post-90s from Tsinghua

Nearly 3 billion yuan raised in three years

Behind Xinghai Tu, a young team has emerged.

Let's start with Gao Jiyang, the founder and CEO. Born in 1992, he graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University for his undergraduate studies and then pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Vision at the University of Southern California. He completed his studies in 3.5 years, setting the shortest graduation record in the laboratory. After that, he worked at autonomous driving companies Waymo and Momenta.

These two career experiences allowed him to meet his future business partners, the two co-founders Zhao Xing and Li Tianwei. Among them, Zhao Xing is an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University, and Li Tianwei is a master's graduate from University College London and was Gao Jiyang's colleague at Momenta.

Another co-founder of the "entrepreneurial foursome" is Xu Huazhe. He was a colleague of Zhao Xing at Tsinghua and is also the head of the Embodied Intelligence Laboratory at Tsinghua University. He obtained his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and then conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University. The latest news is that Xu Huazhe's current consumer-oriented embodied intelligence application project has received seed-round investment from Xinghai Tu.

In this way, four people with top academic backgrounds joined hands to start a business. In September 2023, Xinghai Tu (Suzhou) Artificial Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd. was officially established, focusing on creating "one brain, multiple forms" embodied intelligent robots.

Soon, investors came knocking.

Two months after its establishment, Xinghai Tu completed the first tranche of its angel-round financing. In January 2024, it raised tens of millions of US dollars in the second round of angel-round financing, led by IDG Capital, with BV Baidu Ventures, SEE FUND, GSR Ventures, and Qixi Investment following. In August of the same year, Xinghai Tu completed a Pre-Series A financing of over 200 million yuan, led by Hillhouse Ventures and Ant Group, with Mihoyo, Wuxi Venture Capital Group, Tongge Venture Capital, Funplus, and existing shareholders participating.

In 2025, Xinghai Tu's financing accelerated. That year, the company successively announced five rounds of Series A financing: a 300 million yuan Series A1 financing, exclusively led by Ant Group, with a group of existing shareholders continuing to increase their investment; the total financing amount of Series A2 and A3 exceeded 300 million yuan, led by Cathay Capital, with industrial capital such as Lenovo Capital and Haier Capital participating, and existing shareholders following up.

There was also a strategic financing of over 100 million US dollars in Series A4 and A5. In the Series A4 financing, Capital Today and Meituan Longzhu jointly led the investment, with CICC Porsche Fund, Xianghe Capital, and existing shareholders following. The Series A5 financing was jointly led by Meituan Longzhu and Meituan Strategic Investment, with the Beijing Robotics Industry Fund oversubscribing, Yizhuang Guotou following, and existing shareholders continuing to increase their investment.

Behind the collective bets of investors is that Xinghai Tu is not just about manufacturing robots in a single form but is committed to building the underlying infrastructure to support the intelligent transformation of the entire physical world. So far, Xinghai Tu has achieved global-scale deployment in the field of wheeled dual-arm robots. Its R1 Pro and R1 Lite platforms cover over 90% of the world's top developers and have become the core development platforms for top laboratories such as Fei-Fei Li's team at Stanford University and Physical Intelligence (PI).

At this moment, the embodied intelligence competition is fierce, but only those who can truly achieve commercialization will have the chance to be the last ones standing. It is reported that Xinghai Tu has received thousands of orders and has carried out in-depth scenario verification with dozens of leading manufacturing, logistics, and service enterprises at home and abroad.

As Jinding Capital, one of the leading investors in this round, said, Xinghai Tu has built a full-stack capability system around "data - model - hardware - scenario" and is gradually moving towards the stage of large-scale deployment. In this process, founder Gao Jiyang and his team have continuously demonstrated strong abilities in problem-solving, judgment, execution, and iteration, enabling the company to gain a leading edge in key areas such as model capabilities, data engineering, and commercialization. This round of financing marks the inflection point of value for embodied intelligence from developers to productivity.

Cai Mingpo, the founder and chairman of Cathay Capital, added, "As embodied intelligence has developed to this point, what is most scarce is no longer imagination but an engineering system that can turn capabilities into reliable delivery. We oversubscribed in this round because we saw the certainty of Xinghai Tu in building the system and implementing the deployment. In the long run, the real barrier will be built on trust."

Launching an IPO

Starting a full-scale competition for market share

Looking around, China's embodied intelligence industry is experiencing its most exciting moment.

Since the beginning of the year, financing has been pouring in. In January, Independent Variable Robotics completed a 1 billion yuan Series A++ financing, invested in by ByteDance, Sequoia China, Beijing Information Industry Development Fund, Shenzhen Capital Group, Nanshan Strategic Investment, and Wuxi Venture Capital. Since then, Independent Variable Robotics has received investment from three major tech companies: ByteDance, Meituan, and Alibaba.

Subsequently, Zhujidongli announced the completion of a 200 million US dollar Series B financing, with investors including Stone Venture from the UAE, Orient Fortune Capital, Cornerstone Capital, Tianchuang Capital, GF Xinde Investment, Hefei Innovation Investment, Guotai Junan Innovation Investment, CSC Financial, Tangxing Capital, Caixin Capital, JD.com, Zhongding Co., Ltd., Guangyang Co., Ltd., Dongtu Technology, Shangqi Capital under SAIC Motor, Beyond Era, NIO Capital, and Mingshi Venture Capital.

Just yesterday (February 10), two embodied intelligence companies simultaneously announced financing: Daxiao Robotics and Qiongche Intelligence. Among them, Wang Xiaogang, the chairman of Daxiao Robotics, is also the co-founder and executive director of SenseTime. Behind Qiongche Intelligence are two Stanford alumni, Wang Shiquan and Lu Cewu.

There is no limit to how hot it can get. Although embodied intelligence is now a widely recognized concept, the industry is still in the early exploration stage. Neither the form of the robot body nor the technical route of the "brain" has been finalized. This means that both entrepreneurs and investors still have opportunities to gain an advantageous position.

So we have seen a wave of financing, and on the other hand, the race to list embodied intelligence companies on the stock market has begun. Not only Xinghai Tu, but currently Unitree Technology, Zhongqing Robotics, Magic Atom, Leju Intelligence, Yun Shenchu, Zhipu, Galaxy Universal, etc. have all completed their shareholding reform or updated their IPO progress.

Based on recent discussions, a common view is that it will take at least five years or even longer for the "ChatGPT moment" of embodied intelligence to arrive. It seems that whether it is financing in the primary market or launching an IPO, everyone is preparing resources for the long exploration period in the coming years.

Recalling a year ago, Unitree's "yangko dance" went viral, allowing Unitree to break through the circle in a "phenomenal" way. Now, as the Spring Festival approaches, four embodied intelligence companies have announced that they will be on the Spring Festival Gala. An unconfirmed report shows that the total sponsorship amount from the robotics industry this time reaches hundreds of millions of yuan.

In this intense competition, the anxiety of each company is evident. A dividing line is gradually emerging.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investment World" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Yang Jiyun and Wu Qiong, and is published by 36Kr with permission.