36Kr Exclusive | Lobster Mobility, a brand under Dudu Bus, Completes Nearly 100 Million Yuan Angel Round Financing: Globally Launches AI Travel Assistant
Text by | Liao Yao
Recently, 36Kr learned that the AI mobility brand "RideClaw.ai" announced that it has completed an angel round of financing of nearly 100 million RMB. At the same time, it globally launched an AI personal mobility assistant deeply integrated with the OpenClaw open - source framework. "RideClaw.ai" aims to reshape the global users' travel experience through natural language interaction and intelligent decision - making. This round of financing was jointly invested by multiple well - known institutions and industrial investors. The funds will be mainly used for the technological iteration of the multi - Agent collaboration platform, the establishment of an AI scientist team, and the global market promotion layout, and will further accelerate the large - scale popularization of AI mobility solutions.
The era of "0 commission" is coming, and AI is reshaping the large - scale mobility industry
In 2025, the global business travel market reached 1.57 trillion US dollars, with an annual growth of over 6.6%. Among the "four basic necessities of life", travel, as a core life scenario with high frequency, strong demand, and important decision - making, is undergoing the reconstruction and upgrading of its underlying logic in the current AI era. At the beginning of 2026, OpenClaw promoted the transformation of edge - side AI from "inference" to "execution", reconstructing the ability boundary of edge - side AI, making AI not just a "mouth" to answer questions, but a "hand" and "foot" that can really do things.
"RideClaw.ai is equivalent to the mobility version of Manus." The RideClaw.ai team pointed out. "Manus helps you make PPTs and web pages, while 'RideClaw.ai' focuses on AI assistance in the mobility field, such as taking taxis, booking flights, reserving hotels, and making full - journey itinerary plans. It enables every business traveler to have an administrative assistant that was previously only available to bosses or senior executives." The core logic of RideClaw.ai is that users only need to input their intentions, and the AI is responsible for identification, price comparison, planning, and finally placing orders. Relying on the OpenClaw open - source ecosystem and a deep focus on travel scenarios, RideClaw.ai has achieved a personal preference closed - loop of "the more you use it, the better it understands you".
Manus solves office intelligence, while RideClaw.ai solves travel intelligence. Different from most travel tools that mainly offer "advisory - style suggestions", RideClaw.ai focuses more on users' schedule management and solving the problem of where users should be at what time. From the full - link automatic mode of "personal itinerary calendar → automatic business travel planning → confirmation of reservation → offline fulfillment", users do not need to repeatedly switch between multiple platforms for price comparison, truly achieving a one - stop travel solution.
In terms of business model, RideClaw.ai completely breaks the traditional commission model in the travel industry and adopts a "membership subscription system" similar to the Costco model. Users can enjoy the most cost - effective travel services provided by the platform through the subscription fee without incurring additional hidden costs. The platform has a built - in real - time price comparison engine across the network, which intelligently analyzes price fluctuation trends and accurately captures price troughs. Service providers and suppliers can skip the platform commission link and obtain higher returns. The "0 commission" model ultimately forms a new win - win ecosystem for "users to save worry and money, merchants to increase revenue and efficiency, and the platform to achieve long - term value".
The Sage platform, the infrastructure of the AI mobility industry: The efficiency revolution of Token
"The Token efficiency is increased by 60%, creating an OpenClaw for the vertical travel field." The Sage multi - agent collaboration platform, in which the RideClaw.ai team is deeply involved and contributes, makes complex tasks simpler. The Sage platform enables multiple specialized Agents to work in a coordinated manner. For example, the "price comparison Agent" focuses on comparing real - time prices from global supply ends, the "itinerary planning Agent" is responsible for planning and optimizing routes, and the "emergency Agent" stands by to handle emergencies at any time. This division of labor can greatly compress the Token consumption of a single travel service, which means completing more complex travel tasks with less computing power cost. It is worth mentioning that traditional front - end and back - end engineers can build efficient and usable applications based on Sage. They can quickly launch travel - related products with the help of the platform's capabilities without having to master complex AI technologies in depth.
The Sage platform has been released on GitHub. For the travel industry, whether it is vehicle transportation enterprises, airline ticket agents, regional chain hotels, or vertical travel platforms, practitioners can call the Sage platform's Agent capabilities through API interfaces. The RideClaw.ai team added: "Sage has built an AI infrastructure that can be called by the entire large - scale travel industry, aiming to provide callable and evolvable travel agents for global AI developers and users."
Ten - year industry accumulation, dual - track global promotion: Simultaneous breakthroughs in domestic popularization and European and American business travel
In terms of market layout, RideClaw.ai targets the business travel population in Europe and the United States overseas, adopts a strategy of simultaneous release in the domestic and overseas markets and dual - track promotion, taking into account both the mass popular market and the high - end business travel market. The goal is to create a one - stop travel assistant on a global scale.
RideClaw.ai is jointly created by Dudu Bus, top AI scientists, and a native technology team. The core members come from companies such as Meta, Amazon Zoox, Lyft L5, Kimi, and Tencent, as well as an algorithm team composed of professors from QS TOP20 universities and doctors from Tsinghua University and the University of New South Wales, covering all fields such as technology R & D, industrial operation, and algorithm optimization.
Dudu Bus has ten - year accumulation in the travel field and has long served thousands of enterprise customers such as Huawei, BYD, ByteDance, and Xiaomi, providing employee shuttle buses and customized travel services. It is these B - side experiences that enable the team to accurately capture many pain points in corporate business travel. "Enterprise customers with millions of employees said that they found that corporate taxi - hailing and ticket - booking applications are even more expensive than personal bookings." Chen Zhichao, the co - founder of Dudu Bus, said. "Bosses are concerned about the overall business travel cost, but there is no AI in the company to help them make overall optimization. The traditional system cannot achieve personalized control to meet the different preferences of different employees. In addition, factors such as holiday price fluctuations lead to a large amount of approval work, which has become a common problem in corporate business travel management."
"The essence of these problems is the lack of intelligent cost management." Chen Zhichao added. The ten - year accumulation of population segmentation, supply chain data, and fulfillment capabilities has become the most core barrier for RideClaw.ai. The team predicts that in the future AI era, the most valuable startup companies must be those that can standardize offline service fulfillment. "In addition to being user - friendly, it is also AI - friendly and large - model - friendly. RideClaw.ai aggregates more data and travel services for different models to call. The company plans to expand the services of RideClaw.ai to more enterprise - level applications within the next year and quickly promote them in the domestic and overseas markets in the form of a subscription system, providing more intelligent and personalized travel services for hundreds of millions of users."
Views and messages from investors:
Wu Shichun, the founding partner of Plum Ventures: We have long been concerned about the implementation opportunities of AI in vertical industries. Travel is a typical scenario of "high frequency, strong demand, and important decision - making". I believe that "RideClaw.ai" can become a great global company in the AI era!
Jerry Xie Ran of Matrix Partners China: The era of Agent 2.0 has arrived. "RideClaw.ai" is not simply adding an AI dialog box to travel, but reconstructing the connection mode of people, vehicles, and services from the bottom. The upgrade of the travel mode will bring a brand - new life experience to users.
Li Junting of Xizhilang Group: "Sage" provides a set of AI underlying standards for mainstream travel scenarios. It enables developers and users to obtain more efficient and diversified travel services with fewer Tokens. We look forward to "RideClaw.ai" in the open - source era bringing "travel freedom" to global users!