This Haidian companysuccessfully closes a several-hundred-million-yuan Series B round
AI Translation Notice: This article was translated with the assistance of AI and is for reference only. In case of any discrepancy, the original Chinese text shall prevail.
On March 3, general-purpose embodied-intelligence technology company Xiaoyubot announced the completion of a several-hundred-million-yuan Series B round. The round was led by Highlight Capital (HyT Capital), with CMB International, the Moutai Fund and the Guizhou Province Sci-Tech Innovation Angel Fund following on, and existing shareholders Didi and Xiaomi co-founder Li Wanqiang adding further investment. Qiao Zhongliang, founder of Xiaoyubot, said the round would be used to increase investment in embodied large models, continuously deploy in industrial scenarios, and carry out strategic cooperation with world-leading supply-chain enterprises to accelerate mass production — building, with the goal of "One Brain, Multiple Forms," the most deployment-ready full-stack embodied-intelligence platform.
In this round, thanks to its leading position in industrial-scenario deployment and its active service to the national intelligent-manufacturing system, Xiaoyubot won the favor of industrial capital represented by Highlight Capital, becoming a scarce target in the embodied-intelligence venture-investment field.
A Xiaomi-rooted team anchors a foundation in the general-purpose embodied-intelligence track
Founded in 2023, Xiaoyubot has a founding team drawn from technology companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Microsoft and ByteDance, with graduates from universities including Tsinghua, Peking University, Nanjing University and Beihang. Among them, founder and CEO Qiao Zhongliang is one of Xiaomi's founding members, having served as head of MIUI R&D and responsible for products from MIUI 9 to MIUI 12; co-founder Wang Wenlin served as general manager of Xiaomi's software system platform department and led the development of the "Xiaomi Brain" and the AIoT system.
A group of Xiaomi "brains" coming together to create a "general-purpose robot brain" is exactly the most appealing part of Xiaoyubot. From the very start of the venture, Xiaoyubot has been dedicated to developing the "Xiaoyubot Brain" general-purpose robot brain. Its core concept is to achieve unified control of robot bodies of different forms across a variety of scenarios by building a highly generalizable intelligent agent, enabling robots to perform various tasks in their environment — what Xiaoyubot calls "One Brain, Multiple Forms."
At present, the company has formed a set of self-developed robotics large-model solutions covering intelligent perception and decision-making engines, high-precision motion control technology, dynamic real-time closed-loop control systems, modular intelligent system architecture, and self-learning and self-optimization capabilities, with the main features of high precision, high robustness and high generalization.
Relying on this technology, in July 2024 Xiaoyubot reached cooperation with Tangshan Panasonic to develop large-model intelligent robots, and signed a strategic procurement agreement for a hundred units with a leading heavy-industry enterprise. At present, Xiaoyubot has completed its first batch of mass-production deliveries. These solid achievements have validated the stability and scalability of the "platform + scenario" architecture in industrial environments, and have put Xiaoyubot a step ahead in scenario deployment, quickly attracting the attention of the venture-investment field.
Xiaoyubot's "One Brain, Multiple Forms" builds a demonstration model for applications in high-end manufacturing
According to industry consensus, the embodied-intelligence industry will usher in its "first year of scenario deployment" in 2026. The rise of the industry requires achieving scale, and startups need practical commercial paths — industrial scenarios are undoubtedly an excellent entry point. Against this backdrop, being the first to achieve mass-production delivery is enough to make Xiaoyubot the most deployment-ready embodied-intelligence company at present. As a result, Xiaoyubot has consistently been favored by industrial capital across successive financing rounds. For example, Xiaomi Industrial Investment, iFlytek Venture Capital, Zhongguancun Development Group, Didi and the Beijing Xinchan Fund have invested one after another, with plenty of follow-on investment.
This round's investors saw not only scenario deployment, but also that Xiaoyubot's development path is highly in sync with national policy. Not long ago, after CRRC (China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation) released a list of 14 scenario requirements for industrial embodied-intelligence robots, Xiaoyubot, as a representative general-purpose embodied-intelligence enterprise, actively responded and set up a dedicated task force. Targeting the bottleneck of CRRC's non-standard welding scenarios — reliance on manual labor and insufficient flexibility — it tailored technical solutions based on its original "One Brain, Multiple Forms" technology platform. Through core technologies such as real-time environmental perception and sub-millimeter-precision motion control, it strives to create a demonstration model for the application of industrial-intelligence solutions in high-end manufacturing. Founder Qiao Zhongliang has said that over the next ten years it will continue to deploy in the nation's major equipment, accelerate expansion into high-precision fields such as aerospace, unleash the platform value of "new quality productive forces," and drive Chinese manufacturing toward a comprehensive intelligent upgrade.
The change this brings is that Xiaoyubot is gradually shifting from a pure "darling of industrial capital" to a "market-value highland." Besides Highlight Capital leading this round, CMB International, the Moutai Fund and the Guizhou Province Sci-Tech Innovation Angel Fund followed on, and Didi and Li Wanqiang continued to add investment. The diversity of investors and the firm support of existing shareholders will greatly help it accumulate deeper development momentum in industrial synergy, policy-resource docking and global-market expansion.
Investors offer in-depth interpretations, discussing the opportunities of the embodied-intelligence track and the company's development potential
Sun Yelin, founding partner of Highlight Capital, said that autonomous robots are the core productive force of AI empowering industrial manufacturing, as well as a key element in reshaping global manufacturing. China has the most complete range of industrial scenarios, whole-industry-chain synergy and massive accumulation of industrial data, and has become a natural fertile ground for the iteration and commercial deployment of intelligent manufacturing. "Highlight Capital has long paid attention to this field. We are optimistic about the firm confidence of Xiaoyubot's founder and his pursuit of product quality, and about a team combining AI technology and commercial-deployment potential to solve the challenges of specific industrial scenarios."
Qi Xiaoxiao, managing director of CMB International, said that Xiaoyubot has gathered a top-tier management team and technical team in the industry, entering from large-node welding and deeply cultivating non-standard welding scenarios such as building steel structures and shipbuilding, launching industry-leading welding robot products, and is expected to realize "One Brain, Multiple Forms" in industrial non-standard operation scenarios. "This investment is an important layout by CMB International in the direction of AI and robotics. We look forward to Xiaoyubot continuing to deeply cultivate non-standard scenarios such as welding, spraying and grinding, polishing a new generation of industrial AI foundational software, and becoming a leading domestic industrial-AI enterprise."
The Moutai Fund said that Xiaoyubot has formed a clear technical path and product approach in the embodied-intelligence field, deploying around the real-world needs to replace job types and processes on industrial sites, and choosing to advance application deployment by entering from welding — a high-intensity, highly non-standard job type. "We believe this path helps the company gradually accumulate engineering experience and a data foundation in complex industrial scenarios, with potential room to extend to broader industrial scenarios. In the future, the Moutai Fund will also maintain long-term cooperation with the company to promote the continuous deployment and development of embodied intelligence in the industrial field."
Liu Chuanqi, chairman and general manager of Guizhou Sci-Tech Venture Investment Co., Ltd., said that the embodied-intelligence welding robots that Xiaoyubot has built on its proprietary "One Brain, Multiple Forms" large-model core technology make it a high-quality enterprise for the intelligent upgrading of the traditional welding industry. "In the future, we will leverage the fund's advantages in resource integration and industrial empowerment to promote deeper linkage between Xiaoyubot and traditional industries in Guizhou and the southwest region, empower regional industrial intelligent upgrading with hardcore technology, help build a hard-tech industrial ecosystem, and achieve high-quality development for all parties."