36Kr Exclusive | Shunwei and Wangqian Join Forces to Back This Company, Which Aims to Mass-Produce 10 Million Units of the World's Smallest Lead Screws

Image 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+ round of 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 SAIC Venture Capital, Pudong Tech Innovation, Lenovo Capital and other industrial capitals.

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 self-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.

"The market has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past 8 months," Xu Yang told 36Kr. The last financing closing was in December 2025, when the mainstream industry solutions were mostly centered on Tesla's dexterous hand. Now, 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 neck and face.

Xu Yang observed that the requirement for neck degrees of freedom has surged from 1 or 2 in the past to 4 to 6, which puts forward extremely high requirements for the fine control of human face micro-expressions.

"This is the result of market pressure," 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. Entering 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 screws will be the final solution.

Xu Yang further explained that although rotary joints are easy to control, it is difficult to achieve both high force and small size. Motor stall heating is a common problem that has not been completely solved up to now. The integrated linear joint with screw of NOUSBOT performs much better, because the natural self-locking force of the screw can reduce the continuous working time of the motor, and the motor can work intermittently, which 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 (Image source / Enterprise)

At present, NOUSBOT has realized 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 an accuracy of C5 level, a repeated positioning accuracy of ±0.01mm, and a 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 U disk.

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

In addition, the company is iterating its 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 1% of the fluctuation, 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 closed-loop decision-making basis for fine operations.

The world's smallest planetary roller screw servo electric cylinder (Image 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 vertically, and horizontally it enters multiple scenarios such as medical surgical robots, lithium battery coating, semiconductor optical modules, and low-altitude economy.

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 seats, which has been recognized by SAIC.

In terms of production capacity, at present, the company's Suzhou factory is operating at full capacity 24 hours a day, with an annual production capacity of 3 million units that still cannot meet market demand. Xu Yang said that according to the long-term estimate of 1 million humanoid robots, the annual demand for planetary roller screws will reach 30 million units, 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 units by the end of the year.

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

36Kr: There are no existing standards for micro screws from materials to structures. How does NOUSBOT solve the biggest pain point in the industry, which is service life and reliability?

Xu Yang: This is the joint effort of all components to survive together. Not only screws, but also 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 currently running life tests are still those produced 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 remain 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 the imitation from latecomers and the competition from giants entering the market?

Xu Yang: The threshold for manufacturing screws in China is already high. If you want to enter the micro planetary roller field, the number of competitors is only single-digit. Our strategy is to start early and run fast. We have now 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. The barrier of this platform 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 the demand for screws from these "atypical" joints such as neck, face and wrist to come so fast. In the past, the neck was basically immobile, but now it needs to simulate human micro-expressions and head turning movements with 4-6 degrees of freedom. 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's View:

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

Roller screws have already 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. NOUSBOT's unique technology can realize high-quality production of high-precision roller screws while taking into account production efficiency. At present, its micro screws also maintain a comparative advantage in the dexterous hand field, so 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, with invested projects covering AI, embodied robots, new energy and new materials sectors. It has made heavy investments in semiconductor equipment companies Xinshang Micro-assembly and Shanghai Micro Electronics, deeply exploring new technologies and new opportunities in the new energy industry. At the same time, it is looking 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: Shunwei 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 development trend of micro planetary roller screw is highly clear. Secondly, the market scale has long-term growth potential. In 2024, the global screw industry market size exceeded 23 billion US dollars. 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 a micro electric cylinder market size of 106.9 billion yuan. NOUSBOT's product strength is leading in the industry. It has innovatively adopted exclusive precision technology, successfully got rid of the dependence on imported grinding machines, and become the main supplier of micro electric cylinders for dexterous hands, covering leading customers in the industry.