Humanoid robot companies are raising funds for their own operations while acting as VCs, and have started to aggressively invest in upstream sectors.

On October 10, two financing deals in the embodied intelligent industrial chain for Wuxi Cancer Intelligent and Moxian Technology were officially announced simultaneously. Zibianliang Robot appeared on the investor list of both companies — the former develops integrated joint modules, while the latter focuses on flexible tactile sensors. A robot ontology enterprise bet on two upstream links, drive and perception, on the same day, with a very intensive move.

Reporters from the Star Market Daily noticed that in the past year, from Galaxy General and Xinghaitu to Zhiyuan Robot and Luming Robot, a growing number of embodied intelligent ontology enterprises that are still in the financing stage have begun to invest in upstream component, data service and scenario application companies.

According to incomplete statistics from reporters, as of September 2026, more than 20 domestic embodied intelligent enterprises have made a total of over 100 external investments. "Financing while investing" is no longer an individual case of leading enterprises, and is gradually becoming the choice of most enterprises in the humanoid robot track.

"Financing while investing" becomes the norm, industrial capital rushes to invest in core components

The size of Cancer Intelligent's Series A+ round of financing this time exceeds 100 million yuan, led by Huatai Zijing, with Dechang Motor, Ninebot Capital and Zibianliang Robot participating in the follow-up investment, and old shareholders Ecovacs and Southern Venture Capital continuing to increase their stakes. As a core component manufacturer of integrated robot joints, the company expects the production capacity of joint modules to reach 200,000 sets in 2026 and increase to 1 million sets in 2027. On the same day, Moxian Technology completed an industrial round of financing of tens of millions of yuan, with investors including Zibianliang Robot, Songshan Lake Industrial Investment, etc. Moxian Technology is a domestic manufacturer in the field of flexible tactile sensors, whose products cover tactile sensors and data acquisition gloves. The funds from this round will be used for R&D of new-generation data acquisition gloves, supply chain optimization and mass production capacity construction.

The investor structure of the two financing deals is highly similar: industrial capital plays a leading role, including upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain such as Ecovacs, Dechang Motor and Zibianliang Robot, as well as local industrial funds.

Zibianliang's simultaneous bet on the two upstream links of drive and perception is a microcosm of the current investment boom in the embodied intelligent industry. From the perspective of overall layout, the external investments of leading enterprises mainly focus on two main lines: supply chain binding and data collaboration.

At the supply chain level, against the background of the industry's concentrated efforts to promote mass production and implementation, complete machine enterprises are locking in the production capacity of core components through investment. In addition to Zibianliang Robot's investment in Cancer Intelligent and Moxian Technology, Ecovacs has participated in the follow-up investment of Cancer Intelligent for two consecutive rounds; Zhiyuan Robot has invested in and incubated 15 early-stage projects upstream and downstream of the industrial chain; Lingxin Qiaoshou has deployed the industrial chain through both direct investment and LP capital contribution; Star Era invested in Qianjie Technology to make up for the shortcomings of upstream perception technology.

Deng Taihua from Zhiyuan Robot previously disclosed that Zhiyuan has achieved an 8-fold annualized return on investment from its layout of "investing in early-stage and small projects". However, Zhiyuan does not take financial investment as its goal, but wants to build an industrial chain ecosystem for embodied intelligence through this approach.

At the data collaboration level, real physical interaction data is a relatively scarce link in the training of current embodied large models. In August this year, five leading enterprises including Luming Robot, Mifeng Technology and Zibianliang Robot jointly invested in AI data company Kaiwang Data, with an amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. In the same period, Galaxy General jointly invested in data acquisition solution provider Jianzhi Robot with Baidu. Xinghaitu also invested in many data acquisition companies such as Data Intelligent and Jianzhi Robot.

In addition, the reporter of Star Market Daily found that leading enterprises are no longer satisfied with single-point investment, and have begun to invest in upstream and downstream companies in batches through industrial funds. In June 2026, Xinghaitu and Cathay Capital jointly launched the "Star Road Plan", planning to invest 1 billion yuan in 5 years to invest in 100 upstream and downstream startups in the embodied intelligence field, covering the whole chain of data, components, scenario applications, etc. Lingxin Qiaoshou and Kaichuang Electric set up a 100 million yuan industrial fund, which will give priority to investing in embodied intelligence, core joint modules, intelligent equipment and upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.

The relevant person in charge of Luming Robot told the reporter of Star Market Daily that the significance of upstream strategic investment lies in deepening the collaboration with core supply chain partners and establishing closer cooperative relations in links such as joint development, technical verification and production capacity planning. Investment can strengthen the foundation of long-term cooperation, but the competitiveness of the supply chain ultimately relies on technical capabilities, engineering experience, quality system and delivery performance to build.

Strategic needs outweigh publicity stunts, but the risk of betting on the wrong technical route is relatively high

This boom of "ontology enterprises making investments" — is it driven more by real strategic needs or market publicity stunts? Tang Jingcao, Chairman of Shuimu Capital, told the reporter of Star Market Daily that both factors exist, but by 2026, the proportion of real strategic needs has exceeded that of market publicity stunts.

"Complete machine manufacturers naturally face a contradiction: the financing window is shortening, but the supply chain is not mature enough to support fully market-oriented procurement, and the supply of core components is not stable, with all parties scrambling for resources. Among the embodied intelligence enterprises that have made external investments we have seen in the market, 17 are complete machine ontology manufacturers, accounting for nearly 60%. In this case, spending tens of millions of yuan to lock a team of dexterous hands or joint motors is more important than anything else."

Tang Jingcao said, "If you just want to make a publicity stunt, there is no need to invest in so many projects so early, a few PR-oriented joint investments are enough. The investment density of 37 projects in 23 months for some enterprises is obviously for in-depth supply chain layout, not for showing off to the market."

In his view, it cannot be ruled out that some young enterprises are following the trend, especially those that make investments less than one year after establishment, whose decision-making quality is questionable. However, in terms of the overall trend, external investment has changed from an optional item to a must-have for embodied intelligent enterprises.

The intensive participation of industrial capital has directly changed the pricing method of early-stage projects. Tang Jingcao admitted that in the past, when evaluating component companies, we mainly looked at technical parameters, process maturity and customer verification progress, and the valuation had a relatively stable anchor. Now, if a motor or dexterous hand company receives capital from an ontology manufacturer, there is an additional premium of strategic endorsement in the valuation, and this premium is difficult to quantify. Industrial capital has higher tolerance for valuation than financial investment institutions, "financial investors are in a passive position in negotiations, and their information acquisition lags behind industrial parties by one step."

Regarding the risks of the "financing while investing" model, Tang Jingcao believes that the biggest risk is betting on the wrong technical route and being constrained by one's own investments. "The essence of these ontology companies investing in upstream sectors is to use their own funds to vote for a certain technical route. For example, if a company invests in joint modules of Scheme A, but finds that Scheme B surpasses it in mass production and service life half a year later, this investment will become a burden, which will instead make its own supply chain selection actions distorted."

Regarding the competition and collaboration under the joint investment model, the relevant person in charge of Luming Robot told the reporter of Star Market Daily that promoting the implementation of the embodied intelligent industry has never been a solo effort of a single enterprise, which requires in-depth collaboration of all links such as scenarios, data, models and ontology. "We adhere to independent R&D of core technologies, and for the links in the industrial chain that can form complementarity and have long-term strategic value, we will establish closer collaborative relations through strategic cooperation."

Luming stated that its self-developed Lumos NexCore industrial embodied skill production system has opened up key processes such as data acquisition, model training, skill evaluation, deployment and operation. To give full play to the value of this system, it requires not only its own full-stack technical capabilities, but also the cooperation of industrial chain partners. "The value of industrial collaboration is to jointly improve the overall efficiency of the industrial chain, and all enterprises can give play to differentiated competitive capabilities in product definition, model R&D and customer service, the two are not contradictory."

2026 is widely regarded as the first year of mass production of humanoid robots. Relying only on independent R&D can no longer keep up with the pace of competition. By means of external investment, joint venture incubation, industrial funds and other methods to quickly lock in supply chain, technology and scenario resources, leading enterprises are widening the gap with this approach.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Venture Capital Daily", author: Venture Capital Daily, published with authorization from 36Kr.