36Kr Exclusive | Shunwei Capital and Wangqian team up to back this company that aims to mass-produce 10 million of the world's smallest lead screws.

Source / Enterprise

This article is about 2600 words, with an estimated reading time of 6 minutes

Author | OU Xue

Editor | YUAN Silai

36Kr has learned that NOUSBOT, a supplier of precision transmission components, recently completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A+ financing. This round is led by Shunwei Capital, with participation from Wangqian Mingcheng. The funds will be mainly used for capacity expansion of micro planetary roller screws, product iteration and overseas market layout.

So far, the company has completed four rounds of financing, with historical investors including industrial capital such as SAIC Venture Capital, Shanghai Semiconductor Industry Investment, and Lenovo Capital.

NOUSBOT was founded in July 2023, whose predecessor was a family enterprise with more than 30 years of experience in screw manufacturing. The company focuses on forward R&D and full-process independent production of planetary roller screws and linear actuators, with an R&D center in Shenzhen and manufacturing bases in Shanghai and Suzhou. Xu Yang, founder of NOUSBOT, holds a master's degree in mechanical manufacturing from Tongji University. He once worked for Valeo Group and has accumulated rich industrial experience in the fields of automotive transmission and precision manufacturing.

"In the past 8 months, the market has undergone earth-shaking changes," Xu Yang told 36Kr. The last financing closing was in December 2025, when the mainstream solutions in the industry mostly focused on Tesla's dexterous hand. Today, the number of dexterous hand companies has doubled, and technical routes have diverged rapidly. The industry is no longer satisfied with "having a hand", but extends the transmission demand to the wrist, forearm, even the neck and face.

Xu Yang observed that the requirement for the degree of freedom of the neck has risen sharply from one or two in the past to four to six, which puts forward extremely high requirements for the fine control of human facial micro-expressions.

"This is the result of market forcing," Xu Yang said. In 2025, most of the dexterous hands on the market were "hardly usable", which could only maintain a service life of about 200 hours before frequent failures. By 2026, although some products can complete simple operations, there is still a gap from industrial-level reliability.

In the transmission scheme of linear joints of humanoid robots, the dispute between rotary joints and screws has a long history. Xu Yang judges that the screw will be the final solution.

Xu Yang further explained that although rotary joints are easy to control, it is very difficult to achieve both high force and small size. Motor stalling and heating are common problems that have not been completely solved so far. The integrated linear joint with screw of NOUSBOT performs much better, because the natural self-locking force of the screw can reduce the continuous operation of the motor, allowing it to work intermittently. It not only solves the heating problem, but also saves energy consumption and extends the service life, killing multiple birds with one stone.

NOUSBOT dexterous hand connecting rod and tendon rope scheme (Source / Enterprise)

At present, NOUSBOT has realized the mass production of the world's smallest planetary roller screw with a diameter of only 1.5mm and a nut diameter of 5.5mm, with accuracy up to C5 level, repeat positioning accuracy of ±0.01mm, and maximum bearing capacity of 50N. The micro linear electric cylinder integrated based on this product can output 15kg thrust in a volume as small as a USB flash drive.

The world's smallest planetary roller screw (Source / Enterprise)

In addition, the company is iterating actuators towards the direction of "intelligence". The new generation of integrated intelligent electric cylinder integrates force feedback, accuracy feedback and temperature feedback. For example, the force feedback needs to be accurate to a fluctuation of 1%, and there will be an alarm for motor performance degradation after heating. These multi-dimensional sensor data will be transmitted back to the "brain" and "cerebellum" of the robot to provide a closed-loop decision-making basis for fine operations.

The world's smallest planetary roller screw servo electric cylinder (Source / Enterprise)

36Kr has learned that NOUSBOT's ambition is not limited to humanoid robots. Xu Yang showed 36Kr its "Force Matrix" product plan: the output force covers from 3kg to 1000kg in the vertical direction, and expands to multiple scenarios such as medical surgical robots, lithium battery coating, semiconductor optical modules, and low-altitude economy in the horizontal direction.

Taking the low-altitude economy as an example, NOUSBOT has supplied rudder surface linear actuators to leading UAV enterprises. In the automotive field, Yanfeng seat project has brought 8 designated orders at one time. The micro high force density electric cylinder can greatly reduce the thickness and weight of the seat, which has been recognized by SAIC.

In terms of production capacity, at present, the Suzhou factory of the company is operating at full capacity 24 hours a day, and the annual production capacity of 3 million pieces is still in short supply. Xu Yang said that according to the long-term calculation of 1 million humanoid robots, the annual demand for planetary roller screws will reach 30 million, while the global effective production capacity is seriously insufficient. After this round of financing, the company aims to increase the production capacity to 10 million pieces by the end of the year.

The following is an excerpt of the conversation between 36Kr and Xu Yang, founder of NOUSBOT (edited):

36Kr: Micro screws lack existing standards from materials to structures. How does NOUSBOT solve the biggest pain point in the industry of service life and reliability?

Xu Yang: This is the joint effort of all components to survive together. Not only the screws, but also the hollow cup motors, encoders, and drive control boards all need to last until the end of their service life: for application requirements of 3 million load cycles, we often test one electric cylinder for half a year. The electric cylinders that are running the life test now are still the ones from last winter. Our requirement for ourselves is that the screw must never be a short board. We run tests targeting a service life of millions of cycles, and make the hollow cup motor, gear box and magnetic ring all reach the same level.

Now these core components can basically be stable at the level of millions of cycles, and the highest can reach 3 million cycles. In addition, materials are also being iterated. In the past, we followed the screw materials of the medical or automotive industry, but the working conditions of dexterous hands are completely different, so we have developed new materials more suitable for micro scenarios.

36Kr: What do you think of latecomers' imitation and competition from giants entering the market?

Xu Yang: The threshold for manufacturing screws in China is already high, and if you want to enter the micro planetary roller field, the number of competitors is only single-digit. Our strategy is to run early and run fast. At present, we have reduced the unit price to the level of hundreds of yuan, and the shipment volume is getting higher and higher. I don't think a single patent can block all competitors, so what we need to do is to build a "Force Matrix" platform, so that all industries that use linear transmission can find the most suitable solution in our network. This platform-based barrier is much higher than that of a single product.

36Kr: What is the most unexpected part of the current industry technology evolution?

Xu Yang: I didn't expect that the demand for screws from "atypical" joints such as the neck, face and wrist would come so fast. In the past, the neck basically did not move, but now it is required to simulate 4-6 degrees of freedom of human micro-expressions and head turning movements. More importantly, the lateral force on the wrist, this bionic movement puts forward extremely high requirements for the linear actuator, which the rotary joint cannot achieve at all. This shows that the industry's pursuit of "anthropomorphism" is forcing the rapid iteration of underlying components. For us, wherever a screw is needed, we will quickly come up with a solution, which is our biggest advantage in response speed compared with overseas competitors.

Investor Views:

Wangqian Capital: The performance of planetary roller screws crushes other types of solutions in all aspects. What is valuable is that it can still maintain micron-level positioning accuracy under high-frequency reciprocating motion. Such a high-precision linear actuator solution will surely gradually penetrate into automotive, industrial manufacturing, semiconductor, pharmaceutical and other fields to achieve rapid growth.

Roller screws have steadily ranked first in the cost of embodied robots. How to achieve low cost, stable delivery and miniaturization will definitely be the key to the future development of the industry. The unique technology of NOUSBOT can realize high-quality production of high-precision roller screws while taking into account production efficiency. At present, the small screws also maintain a comparative advantage in the field of dexterous hands. Therefore, we very much expect NOUSBOT to become a leading enterprise and hidden champion in the entire linear actuator industry.

Wangqian Capital focuses on hard technology investment. Its invested projects cover AI, embodied robots, new energy and new materials. It has heavily invested in semiconductor equipment companies Core Micro-assembly and Shanghai Micro Electronics, deeply cultivated new processes and new opportunities in the new energy industry, and at the same time looked for high-quality enterprises with core components, high added value and high technical barriers in industries with common demand. NOUSBOT fully meets the investment criteria of Wangqian Capital.

Shunwei Capital: Shunwei Capital is optimistic about the development prospects of NOUSBOT, because the industry development trend is clear, the development of the dexterous hand/humanoid robot track has become an inevitable trend, and the most important development directions (miniaturization, light weight, high degree of freedom, stability) all rely on the performance improvement of micro electric cylinders. As the most core "stuck neck" component, the micro planetary roller screw has a highly clear industry development trend. Secondly, the market scale has a long and growing track. The global screw industry market size exceeded 23 billion US dollars in 2024. As the core growth driver, the humanoid robot scenario has the opportunity to drive the planetary roller screw market to achieve explosive growth. It is estimated that by 2030, the global planetary roller screw market size in embodied scenarios will reach 29.8 billion yuan, corresponding to the micro electric cylinder market size reaching 106.9 billion yuan. NOUSBOT's product strength is leading in the industry. It innovatively adopts exclusive precision technology, successfully breaks the dependence on imported grinding machines, and becomes the main supplier of Lingxin Qiaoshou micro electric cylinders, covering leading customers in the industry.