Xiaoyubotcloses several-hundred-million-yuan Series B+ round
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On May 9, general-purpose embodied-intelligence technology company Xiaoyubot announced the completion of a several-hundred-million-yuan Series B+ round. The round was jointly invested by three new investors — BAIC Capital, Fosun RZ Capital and C&D Emerging Industry — with existing shareholders Highlight Capital and the Guizhou Sci-Tech Angel Fund following on, and Didi and Xiaomi co-founder Li Wanqiang continuing to add investment; Gengxin Capital served as exclusive financial advisor and also invested. Following Highlight Capital's lead of the Series B round, Xiaoyubot again received intensive additional backing from industrial capital, and its investor lineup now spans four industrial categories — consumer electronics, automotive, shipbuilding and construction — with the industrial ecosystem map of industrial embodied intelligence taking further shape. Founder Qiao Zhongliang said that annual shipments of 100,000 units are the ticket to the finals of embodied intelligence, and that Xiaoyubot is confident it can create a super hit product in the field of intelligent welding.
Annual shipments of 100,000 units: Xiaoyubot aims to build an embodiment hit product
On April 28, Qiao Zhongliang published an article on Xiaoyubot' official WeChat account for the first time, detailing the company's progress over three years of entrepreneurship.
The article revealed that Xiaoyubot was founded in 2023, with the vision of "becoming a world-leading general-purpose intelligent robot platform, making an intelligent labor force into infrastructure that everyone can share and that is available everywhere." Most of its founding team have professional backgrounds at Xiaomi, Huawei and ByteDance. There are six partners, among them founder and CEO Qiao Zhongliang, former head of Xiaomi MIUI R&D; co-founder and CTO Wang Wenlin, former general manager of Xiaomi's software system platform department; and partner Shi Jiangtong, the first structure department manager of Xiaomi's phone division and former general manager of hardware R&D for the Xiaomi ecosystem chain. Xiaoyubot currently has 120 employees, about 60 of whom work on model algorithms, with an average age of 28 and the youngest at 24, all graduates of well-known universities at home and abroad.
Xiaoyubot is dedicated to building a "One Brain, Multiple Forms" general-purpose robot brain and industrial-application products, first focusing on the intelligent welding scenario; its products have been applied by multiple strategic customers and have reached the mass-production and delivery stage. Public information shows that Xiaoyubot has reached strategic cooperation agreements with Tangshan Panasonic and China Construction Steel Structure Intelligent Technology, and on April 26 established the "Beihang·Xiaoyubot Joint Laboratory of Industrial Embodied Intelligence," indicating that Xiaoyubot' real deployment capability in high-value industrial scenarios such as complex, generalized welding has been recognized by both industry and academia.
Qiao Zhongliang said that the current pain point of the embodied-intelligence industry is the lack of a super hit product — the "iPhone moment" has not yet arrived. "Annual shipments of 5,000 to 10,000 units are a necessary condition for entering the first tier; annual shipments of 100,000 units basically lock in the ticket to the finals." Qiao believes the road to general-purpose embodied intelligence must be paved by frontline production scenarios, and that the industrial-deployment route has the chance to create a true super hit product.
Three industrial-capital players enter, and Xiaoyubot's industrial embodied-intelligence alliance takes initial shape
The most striking feature of this round is that industrial capital is intensively and rapidly entering Xiaoyubot' investor lineup.
BAIC Capital, backed by the BAIC Group, has deep industrial resources in automobile manufacturing and related fields. In recent years, BAIC Capital has repeatedly made moves in the embodied-intelligence field, which is highly homologous with the automotive industry chain, successively investing in several leading enterprises and covering the complete industry chain from body to perception, from chips to applications. This investment is an important move by BAIC Capital in industrial scenarios, and moreover a recognition of Xiaoyubot' technical accumulation and deployment capability in industrial embodied intelligence.
Fosun RZ Capital and Series B lead investor Highlight Capital are both representatives of industrial capital deeply engaged in hard technology. Highlight Capital bluntly stated that "embodied intelligence is a field worth long-term concentrated investment" and made it a core layout direction of its industrial-intelligence segment; Fosun RZ Capital explicitly included embodied intelligence among its four core tracks, relying on the ecosystem of Fosun's "intelligent manufacturing" segment, and placing particular emphasis on the scenario-deployment capability of embodied intelligence — which is precisely the advantage of Xiaoyubot most recognized by investors.
Xiamen C&D Group is a leading comprehensive industrial group in China. As an important platform for C&D Group's layout of emerging-industry investment, C&D Emerging Industry drives deep resonance between industry and capital, fully leveraging relevant industrial resources within C&D Group to empower enterprises: C&D Steel Group ranks first on the comprehensive list of China's top 100 steel-trading enterprises. Traditional bulk-commodity distribution enterprises need intelligent industrial upgrading — as steel flows from warehouses to construction sites and factories, intelligent welding is precisely the key link that connects the "last centimeter." And this "one centimeter" intelligent leap is the core point of alignment in the mutual choice between C&D Emerging Industry and Xiaoyubot.
Notably, Xiaoyubot' investor lineup now brings together four industrial players — consumer electronics (Xiaomi Group), automotive (BAIC Capital), shipbuilding (CMB International) and the steel supply chain (industry under Xiamen C&D Group) — covering the core scenarios with the greatest scaling potential in industrial embodied intelligence. On April 26, founder Qiao Zhongliang launched an industrial embodied-intelligence alliance initiative at the founding ceremony of the "Beihang·Xiaoyubot Joint Laboratory of Industrial Embodied Intelligence"; as the various industrial players have successively come on board, this alliance has taken initial shape.
Li Wanqiang continues to add investment; existing shareholders trust the "industrial-deployment" route
Since its founding in 2023, Xiaoyubot has been favored by industrial capital in successive financing rounds — for example, Xiaomi Industrial Investment, iFlytek Venture Capital, Yuri Capital, Didi and the Beijing Xinchan Fund have successively invested. More importantly, existing shareholders have not lacked follow-on investment, showing strong confidence in Xiaoyubot.
In this round, the continued additional backing from existing shareholders is also noteworthy. Highlight Capital and the Guizhou Sci-Tech Angel Fund, both making their first follow-on investment this round, had just completed the lead and follow-on respectively in the Series B round; existing shareholders such as Li Wanqiang and Didi continued to invest on the basis of multiple prior add-ons.
Founder Qiao Zhongliang said: "Over three years, Xiaoyubot has not been influenced by the mainstream narrative of 'humanoid spectacle,' and has always deeply cultivated industrial deployment. Existing shareholders' continued confidence is the greatest recognition of this route of ours."
From Series B to Series B+ in just two months, the accelerating financing pace reflects the capital market's repricing of the industrial embodied-intelligence field — as the fever for "humanoid spectacle" tends toward rationality, industrial players who have truly run through a business loop are becoming scarce targets.
Zhang Shun, deputy director of the second investment department of BAIC Capital, said: BAIC Capital has built a complete investment matrix in embodied intelligence covering body, perception, motion control and chips. It is highly optimistic about industrial scenarios as the main battlefield for the deployment of embodied intelligence; with its "One Brain, Multiple Forms" technical architecture and its pioneering mass-production and delivery commercialization capability, Xiaoyubot is in a leading position in the industrial embodied-intelligence field. BAIC Capital will rely on its industrial resources in automobile manufacturing and other fields to jointly explore with Xiaoyubot the large-scale application of industrial embodied intelligence in more scenarios.
Gao Junwei, managing director of Fosun RZ Capital, said: The industrial-robot industry transformation driven by embodied intelligence has reached an inflection point for deployment. Xiaoyubot has outstanding advantages in the R&D of both the embodied-intelligence brain and the robot body, with deep technical barriers and industry insight. Relying on full-stack in-house technology, the company has achieved rapid technical adaptation and large-scale commercialization in heavy-industry non-standard scenarios, and has established close cooperation with multiple leading customers in the industry. The team has a top-tier background, combining internet product thinking with underlying large-model R&D strength, deep insight into the trend of industrial intelligence, efficient iteration and pragmatic deployment. Fosun RZ Capital is very optimistic that Xiaoyubot will continue to lead the industrial embodied-intelligence field, empowering the intelligent upgrading of manufacturing with top-tier technology.
Li Yan, deputy general manager and co-chief investment officer of C&D Emerging Industry, said: Relying on C&D Group's industrial soil and its understanding of bulk-commodity distribution and industrial services, C&D Emerging Industry sees the urgent demand of traditional industries for intelligent upgrading. Steel distribution is the core link connecting upstream production with downstream construction and infrastructure applications, and the maturing of intelligent welding technology will profoundly change the construction efficiency and quality standards of steel-structure buildings. Xiaoyubot' technical accumulation and deployment results in industrial embodied intelligence are highly complementary to C&D's industrial scenarios. We hope, through this investment, to promote the deep application of industrial embodied intelligence in the infrastructure field.