Another robotics company raises 840 million yuan in financing: ByteDance, Meituan, and Didi make a rare joint investment

There has been another significant round of financing in the robotics track.

On March 16th, Digua Robotics announced the completion of a $120 million (approximately RMB 840 million) Series B1 financing. If we include the $100 million Series A financing completed last year, the cumulative financing of this company in these two rounds has reached $220 million.

What's more noteworthy is the investment lineup. The investors in this round include industrial capitals such as Synstellation Capital, Didi, and Meituan Longzhu, as well as institutional investors like Bairui Capital, BAIC Capital, Jiukun Venture Capital, and Xinlian Capital.

Meanwhile, old shareholders such as Hillhouse Venture Capital, Vertex Growth under Singapore's Temasek, Linear Capital, Wuyuan Capital, and Plum Ventures also chose to increase their investments.

Such a substantial and complex round of financing actually reflects a new trend: capital is beginning to focus on the infrastructure layer of the robotics industry.

Building the "Robotics Foundation"

Different from many robotics companies, Digua Robotics does not directly produce complete robot products.

Its positioning is more like a "foundation-type company", mainly providing the core technological basis required for robot intelligence, including: robot computing chips, algorithm capabilities, and software development platforms.

To put it simply, it provides a complete set of intelligent computing platforms for robot manufacturers.

Currently, Digua Robotics has formed a computing power product system ranging from 5 TOPS to 560 TOPS, which can support different types of robots, including humanoid robots, quadruped robot dogs, wheeled-legged robots, logistics AMRs, and home companion robots.

For robot manufacturers, this type of platform means they can directly develop products on the existing technological foundation without having to rebuild from the underlying computing power and software architecture.

Opportunities in "Chips + Systems"

Currently, the robotics industry is entering an acceleration phase: on the one hand, core technologies are continuously making breakthroughs; on the other hand, more and more robot products are starting to leave the laboratory and enter real-world scenarios such as households, commercial services, and industries.

Against this backdrop, Digua Robotics has chosen to enter the industry from the underlying platform.

The company has long-term cooperation with Horizon Robotics, leveraging the latter's BPU computing architecture and large model technology that have been verified by tens of millions of mass-productions to jointly build a computing platform for robot applications.

Meanwhile, Digua Robotics provides a complete set of development tools from simulation testing to physical deployment, helping enterprises shorten the R & D cycle, lower the development threshold, and accelerate product implementation.

In the past few years, the competition in the robotics industry was mainly among complete robot manufacturers.

However, as the technology matures, the industrial chain is starting to differentiate rapidly: more and more companies are focusing on different links, such as robot chips, operating systems, development platforms, and algorithm models.

Similar to the Wintel system in the PC era and the Android ecosystem in the mobile phone era, the robotics industry is also looking for its own underlying platform.

The Invisible Supplier Behind the Hit Products

Digua Robotics has already appeared in many popular robot products.

For example, in the field of floor-cleaning robots, its technology is applied in the AI binocular perception solution of Yunjing Xiaoyao 002;

In the field of drones, its computing platform supports the panoramic drone Antigravity A1 launched by Insta360;

In the field of home robots, its solution is also used in the home robot dog products of Vita Power.

These products cover different scenarios such as households, consumer electronics, and service robots. To some extent, Digua Robotics is more like an "invisible supplier" in the robotics industrial chain.

Why Are Industrial Capitals Getting Involved?

A notable feature of the investment list in this round is the high proportion of industrial capitals. The presence of Internet platforms such as Didi and Meituan also makes this round of financing more interesting.

The reason is actually not complicated. The real value of robots in the future lies not only in the technology itself but also in their entry into specific application scenarios, such as unmanned delivery, urban inspection, commercial service robots, and home service robots.

These scenarios are naturally related to the businesses of platform companies. Therefore, for Internet platforms, pre - laying out the underlying technologies of robots is also a long - term investment in the future intelligent terminal ecosystem.

This article does not constitute any investment advice.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Pencil News" (ID: pencilnews), author: Song Ge, published by 36Kr with authorization.