211 universities in Northeast China have completely dominated this track.

Author / YU Mengying 

Reporting / PEdaily 

"Harbin Engineering University has almost taken over the deep-sea robot track."

This remark from an investor friend is well-founded. Recently, three marine robotics companies have seen booming financing: Suzhou-based Sailing Intelligence and Gongzhi Ocean, as well as Greater Bay Area-based Deep-sea Intelligent Human, have announced the completion of financing, with a long list of investors gathered behind them.

After sorting out the information, a common figure emerges — All three companies are founded by alumni of Harbin Engineering University. Most of them have been engaged in the marine industry for many years. As deep-sea embodied intelligence reaches the critical point of industrialization, investors are flocking in, hoping to invest in an "underwater Unitree".

"In this industry, Harbin Engineering University alumni are extremely competitive," the investor friend admitted, adding that he is currently exploring projects along the alumni network. This is not surprising. This time-honored Project 211 university has a history dating back more than 70 years, and is now selected into the national "Double First-Class" initiative. Its naval architecture and ocean engineering discipline has profound accumulation, and has become a cradle of domestic marine equipment talents.

If we look a little further, Harbin Institute of Technology, known as the "Whampoa Military Academy of Robotics", also stands by the Songhua River. So far, these two "twin stars" located in Harbin have formed a unique presence in this round of hard technology entrepreneurship wave.

Marine Robotics Is Booming

This Group of Alumni Has Taken Over The Entire Track

Several financing deals outline the growth context of the Harbin Engineering University camp in the marine industry.

The latest event this week is that Gongzhi Ocean announced the completion of a nearly 100 million-yuan angel round of financing, with investors including Zhongxin Zhidi, Lihe Finance, Yinfeng Capital, Small Is Big Venture Capital, and Harbin Engineering University Asset Management, setting a new record for the amount of angel round financing in the deep-sea sector.

Located in Suzhou, Gongzhi Ocean is backed by GUO Chunyu, a Harbin Engineering University professor with more than 20 years of experience in naval architecture and ocean engineering. Born in Bengbu, Anhui Province in 1981, he was admitted to Harbin Engineering University at the age of 18, completed his undergraduate, master and doctoral studies successively, did postdoctoral research and visiting study at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and University College London (UCL) in the UK respectively, then returned to Harbin Engineering University as a doctoral supervisor, and once served as the deputy dean of the College of Shipbuilding Engineering of Harbin Engineering University for a long time.

Looking through his experience, his life path has almost always centered on ship propulsion, deep-sea equipment and polar technology. Gongzhi Ocean was founded in 2024, targeting the positioning of "Huawei in the deep sea", and launched the world's first integrated deep-sea robot with both exploration and operation functions, becoming one of the few embodied intelligence platforms that have truly overcome the core deep-sea operation technologies.

Similarly, last month Deep-sea Intelligent Human completed a Series A financing of over 500 million yuan. The list of investors is noteworthy — new shareholders include Guanghe Venture Capital, Dachen Caizhi, GGV Capital, Yida Capital, China Insurance Investment, CETC Investment, and the energy technology fund with TotalEnergies managed by Cathay Capital as the contributing entity. Meanwhile, a number of old shareholders such as Zhengxuan Investment, Yunze Capital, Yunshi Capital, Gaojie Capital and Xingzhi Capital made large-scale follow-on investments, which speaks volumes for the deal's significance.

The core figure behind the company is also a Harbin Engineering University alumnus — MA Yiming, who graduated from the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering program in 2013. He once worked for a long time in an internationally renowned deep-sea robotics company as the chief technical director, and is also the first domestic industrial talent who systematically introduced European and American deep-sea robot technologies. He participated in the formulation of a number of national standards for underwater robots, and led or participated in projects including the world's first commercial deep-sea mining robot "Nautilus", the full ultra-deepwater work-class ROV, and China's first heavy-duty seabed operation robot.

When he first entered the industry in his early years, rows of heavy-duty work-class deep-sea robots in the workshop made a strong impression on MA Yiming, so he decided to independently develop deep-sea robots. Deep-sea Intelligent Human was founded in 2023, focusing on tackling key problems in deep-sea rigid-demand industrial scenarios such as offshore oil and gas, submarine communication, offshore wind power, and deep-sea mining, and soon won most of the commercial complete machine orders in the domestic market.

There is also Sailing Intelligence, a marine robotics unicorn whose products are capable of operating in the full ocean depth range from 0 to 10,000 meters. The company announced the completion of a Series A financing of over 1 billion yuan in June this year, which left a deep impression on the venture capital circle.

This is a team that came out of the Harbin Engineering University laboratory. "Many people ask me where my fate with marine robots began. My answer is the E-Wei Association of Harbin Engineering University, the underground laboratory in Building 21," said CHEN Xiaobo. During his sophomore year, CHEN Xiaobo independently developed the first underwater cleaning robot at Harbin Engineering University, won the first prize of National Defense Science and Technology Progress at the age of 28, and founded Sailing Intelligence in 2023. His interest turned into a career, and the robots began to head to the vast ocean.

Unconsciously, this little-known track has been taken over by this northeast China-based Project 211 university.

Why Harbin Engineering University?

"The greatest pursuit of engineering is perfection, the greatest pursuit of academia is truth", by the Songhua River, hidden dragons and crouching tigers abound.

Harbin Engineering University has a long history, and is now affiliated to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Its school-running strategy adheres to the "Three Oceans and One Nuclear" principle, namely shipbuilding industry, naval equipment, ocean development and nuclear energy application, forming a university culture with "loyalty" as the soul, "engineering practice" as the core, and "coastal defense" as the feature.

It can be said that Harbin Engineering University has served China's industrial modernization from the very beginning. This can be seen from its school-running strategy — adhering to the "Three Oceans and One Nuclear" principle, namely shipbuilding industry, naval equipment, ocean development and nuclear energy application, forming a university culture with "loyalty" as the soul, "engineering practice" as the core, and "coastal defense" as the feature.

Many well-known domestic firsts came out of here, including China's first experimental submarine, first hydrofoil craft, first on-board computer, and first strip sounding instrument. Its achievements such as dual-working submersibles, hovercrafts, and gradient sound velocity meters have won world first titles.

The university also has strong disciplinary strength — the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering discipline is selected as a "Double First-Class" construction discipline, and 8 disciplines including engineering, materials science, computer science, chemistry, environment/ecology, physics, geoscience, and social sciences general studies have entered the top 1% of ESI rankings, among which engineering has entered the top 1‰ in the world.

To strengthen the cultivation of top-notch innovative talents, Harbin Engineering University has four innovative talent training experimental classes: Chen Geng Class, Naval Architecture and Ocean Class, Marine Power Class, and Nuclear Innovation Class, and encourages students to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship. Its Harbin Ship Maker Mass Innovation Ecological Park has become a national-level maker space. What is more impressive is the E-Wei team, which has won the world championship in the International Underwater Robot Competition for two consecutive sessions.

For students of Harbin Engineering University, this is a perfect opportunity to sail their personal ships to the ocean of the times — their majors in naval architecture, oceanography, semiconductors, nuclear energy, artificial intelligence and other fields are naturally in line with national strategies and the future of the world. As CHEN Xiaobo said frankly, from the laboratory to the 10,000-meter deep sea, people from Harbin Engineering University have taken a "difficult but correct" path.

After all, the exploitation level of the ocean by human beings is less than 0.1% of the total ocean area. Taking the deep-sea mining scenario as an example, the space it contains is staggering — a report released by UBS in November 2025 estimates that the total potential value of global deep-sea mineral resources is in the range of 177 trillion to 280 trillion US dollars.

Innovation in deep-sea technology has far-reaching impacts. At this moment, Harbin Engineering University, which has nurtured a large number of high-end marine talents and many domestic first marine equipment achievements, is undoubtedly at the forefront.

The "Twin Stars" Rise in Northeast China

The Entrepreneurial Legion Is Growing

Without this round of hard technology entrepreneurship wave, this northern ice city might rarely appear in the spotlight.

Some people once selected two "seriously underrated" 985 universities, one of which is Harbin Institute of Technology. At present, Harbin Engineering University is also gradually coming into the public view, forming two bright "twin stars" of northeast Chinese universities together with Harbin Institute of Technology.

Looking back, Harbin Institute of Technology was founded even earlier. In 1920, Harbin Sino-Russian Industrial School was established in this northern ice city, initially setting up two departments: railway construction and electrical and mechanical engineering. It was renamed Harbin Institute of Technology in 1938, and the name has been used ever since.

Quiet, tough and pragmatic, perhaps because it was born in a severe cold region, Harbin Institute of Technology has had a distinctive northern temperament from its very beginning. Over the past century, its name has always appeared in fields that are more difficult, more important, and require long-term investment: aerospace, equipment manufacturing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and so on.

The currently booming robotics industry is almost half occupied by the Harbin Institute of Technology camp — Yueju Robotics, Woan Robotics, Standard Robots and other companies have successively gone public, and many other robotics startups such as LUOBOPARTY founded by post-2000s HUANG Yi, collaborative robot company FR Robotics co-founded by post-1980s alumni, and Xuanchuang Robotics founded by FU Zhe are thriving, forming a spectacular legion.

"Cradle of Engineers" is the common impression of the outside world on Harbin Institute of Technology. Over the years, Harbin Institute of Technology has cultivated 131 academicians of the two Chinese academies of sciences, and more than 1,000 chief designers for aerospace and national defense projects, ranking among the top in domestic universities. To this day, the school motto "Rigorous Standards, Sufficient Efforts" is still engraved on every person from Harbin Institute of Technology.

In a sense, both universities have integrated their own destiny into China's industrialization process. When the decades-long technology accumulation of the "national team" meets the timing of industrialization, a chapter about capital, entrepreneurship and new technology waves is slowly unfolding.

Taking the deep-sea robotics industry as an example, due to the immature technology and industrial application, many R&D personnel spent tens of millions of yuan to develop prototypes, which were left in the laboratory for 10 or 20 years. Until the window opened, capital quickly poured into this track that had long been neglected.

In 2025, the government work report listed "deep-sea technology" as a key field of strategic emerging industries for the first time, side by side with commercial aerospace and low-altitude economy; in March this year, the "15th Five-Year Plan Outline" was officially approved, which calls for accelerating the construction of a maritime power and improving China's capabilities in deep-sea entry, exploration, exploitation and security. For a while, the deep-sea economy has become a new high ground for global strategic competition.

As MA Yiming, founder of Deep-sea Intelligent Human, said, the so-called deep-sea embodied intelligence is essentially to forge a fundamental capability for the country and mankind — a capability that "can freely enter, fully understand, and effectively develop the blue territory covering 71% of the Earth's surface". It can be said that hardware and intelligent systems determine the potential of human beings to reach the deep sea.

If we turn the clock back 10 years, when the robotics industry was far from as prosperous as it is today, a group of students from Harbin Institute of Technology and Harbin Engineering University followed their interests and dived into laboratories and competitions, started their entrepreneurial journey with like-minded fellow students, and achieved blockbuster success when the critical point of technology arrived.

As always, whenever China ushers in the golden age of technology-driven entrepreneurship, these top hardcore science and engineering universities will continuously produce entrepreneurs, and the trend will last forever.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "PEdaily" (ID: pedaily2012), author: YU Mengying, published with authorization from 36Kr.