Four Industry Leaders Join Forces to Propel a Billion-Dollar Embodied AI Unicorn

Four Industry Leaders Unite Behind Capital to Create a Billion-Dollar Embodied Unicorn

On February 24, 2026, another billion-dollar embodied unicorn was born. Following Zhijipang‘s announcement of over 1 billion yuan in Series B financing and a valuation exceeding 10 billion yuan, Hangzhou Embodied Intelligence and Spirit AI, a developer of humanoid robot technology, announced they had successfully completed two rounds of financing totaling nearly 2 billion yuan. Similar to the impressive lineup of investors drawn to Zhijipang, which includes CRRC Capital and Baidu’s strategic investment arm, Spirit AI’s financing round has attracted key players in the industry: Yunfeng Capital, Sequoia China, TCL Ventures, and 360 Fund. Notably, Shunwei Capital, a seed round investor, is backed by Lei Jun, while JD.com, a Pre-A+ round investor, is associated with Liu Qiangdong. With this latest financing, Spirit AI has also brought in the likes of Jack Ma from Yunfeng Capital and Zhou Hongyi from 360 Fund, attracting four major figures from the internet sector.

With this round of financing successfully completed, Spirit AI’s valuation has surpassed the 10 billion yuan mark, officially making it a core member of the “Billion Club” in the embodied intelligence sector. To date, there are six members of this club: besides the newly minted unicorn Spirit AI and Zhijipang, ZhiYuan Robotics reached a valuation of 15 billion yuan early on; Yushu Technology, which has garnered national attention with its two consecutive Lunar New Year Gala appearances, is now valued at 12 billion yuan after its latest financing round; Galaxy Universal has a valuation of approximately 21 billion yuan; and Xinghai Map is the fourth domestic embodied intelligence unicorn to reach the billion-dollar mark. It’s worth noting that Hangzhou is a significant hub for the embodied intelligence industry, being home to both Spirit AI and Yushu Technology, further expanding its influence as one of the “Six Little Dragons of Hangzhou.”

Over 33 Billion Yuan Raised in Six Rounds Over Two Years with Backing from Major Investors

According to public records, Han Fengtai, a student of robotics academic leader Ding Han, co-founded Luoshi Robotics in 2015 as its CTO. During this period, he assembled a world-class control and algorithm development team, successfully developing and delivering nearly 20,000 units across two major product lines: industrial robots and collaborative robots. With the surge of large models accelerating the arrival of AI 2.0, Han seized the opportunity to partner with Gao Yang, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Interdisciplinary Information, and head of the Visual and Embodied Intelligence Laboratory, to establish Spirit AI (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. in January 2024.

In addition to having these two prominent figures at the helm, Spirit AI boasts a team known as the “Irreplicable AI Dream Team,” comprising members from top universities like UC Berkeley, Tsinghua University, and Peking University. The team, with an average age under 30, possesses strong academic and engineering expertise in core areas of embodied models, such as multimodal large models, robotics, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning. The team not only consistently contributes core outcomes to the international open-source community but also possesses the full-chain capabilities to integrate “models – algorithms – hardware.” Investors have remarked that “the team at Spirit AI is comparable to the configurations at Pi and Google DeepMind.”

In August 2024, Spirit AI announced it had completed nearly 200 million yuan in seed and angel round financing, with seed round investors including Shunwei Capital and Oasis Capital (which continued to invest in the angel round). The angel round was led by Honghui Capital, with participation from Dacheng Caizhi and Qicheng Capital. In November of the same year, Spirit AI received exclusive angel + round financing from BoRui Capital. In March 2025, Spirit AI secured 528 million yuan in its Pre-A round financing, attracting Prosperity7 Ventures (P7), a subsidiary of Aramco Ventures, as the lead investor, with several other capital entities including CMSC Ventures, GF Xinde, Jingya Capital, Dongfang Fuhai, and Huakong Fund deeply involved.

The peak of this funding frenzy occurred on July 21, 2025, when “JD.com led three consecutive rounds of financing,” with Spirit AI being one of the companies receiving nearly 600 million yuan in Pre-A+ financing, along with Zhujiji Power and Zhongqing Robotics. With the latest announcement of nearly 2 billion yuan in financing, Spirit AI has completed six rounds of financing in less than two years, with a total funding amount of approximately 3.328 billion yuan.

It is also noteworthy that in terms of industry capital layout, Spirit AI is unique as the only embodied intelligence startup attracting diverse industrial capital to invest simultaneously, establishing a unique “full-scenario ecosystem” in the embodied intelligence sector. From leaders in industrial manufacturing such as Ningde Times, Inovance Technology, and TCL, to logistics, retail, and financial infrastructure represented by JD.com and CMSC Ventures, and two major consumer electronics giants, Huawei and Xiaomi, the industrial shareholders have achieved cross-industry coverage of core sectors of the real economy.

Regarding the entry of large companies like Xiaomi, Tencent, and Xiaopeng into embodied intelligence, Han Fengtai, in an interview with Late Point AI, stated, “I often tell our team internally that our true competitors in the future will be these large companies. Companies like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Li Auto, which operate both hardware and software, are more likely to excel. In this round of financing, Spirit AI has attracted many industrial investors, such as Huawei, Xiaomi, and JD.com. These large firms have their own scenarios and embodied departments, but they lack models. In the future, we can provide them with ‘standard robots + models + data management platforms,’ allowing customers to fine-tune this system for downstream tasks and develop their own robot agents.”

According to Tianyancha information, Han Fengtai, as the actual controller, directly holds 24.8583% of Spirit AI’s shares and indirectly holds 16.3897%. P7 holds 7.5603%, making it the largest external institutional shareholder. Additionally, Shunwei Capital holds a total of 4.4048% of Spirit AI’s shares; JD.com holds 3.8067%; and Huawei’s Hubble Investment holds 1.1777%. The latest shareholding situation for Yunfeng Capital and 360 Fund remains unclear.

Building Dual Barriers of Models and Data, Collaborating with JD.com to Explore Commercialization

As large models reconstruct the digital world, the tide of “embodiment” in artificial intelligence is becoming a central narrative in the global technology industry. According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, by 2025, the total financing amount in the domestic embodied intelligence sector has reached 73.543 billion yuan, with over 740 investment events, indicating sustained interest in this sector. Amidst this influx of capital, the market is also rapidly differentiating. Moving from conceptual hype to value realization, companies with genuine technological moats and the ability to penetrate industry scenarios are becoming prized targets for investment. Spirit AI exemplifies this trend.

As one of the few embodied intelligence companies in China with comprehensive Al+ robotics production capabilities, Spirit AI is dedicated to developing world-class general-purpose humanoid robots and the next generation of embodied large models and learning algorithms, making robotic companions accessible in every household and driving the world into the era of intelligent robotics. In June 2025, Spirit AI officially launched the Moz1, a humanoid robot equipped with their proprietary VLA model. The robot features 26 degrees of freedom, incorporates the highest power density integrated force-control joints globally, and is equipped with advanced high-precision and high-speed WBC algorithms, achieving a load-to-weight ratio of 1:1. Moreover, the robot can perform zero-latency remote operations and, combined with the self-developed multidimensional data acquisition devices, can efficiently gather data to support hourly model iterations.

In terms of embodied models, Spirit AI’s self-developed VLA model, Spirit v1, continues to evolve, capable of executing tasks such as organizing a desk, throwing away garbage, and repositioning chairs in an office environment, thereby enhancing its ability to operate across multiple scenarios. In January 2026, Spirit AI’s open-source Spirit v1.5 model became the first Chinese open-source model to surpass the performance of Pi0.5. This model boasts robust zero-shot generalization capabilities, enabling it to perform complex tasks like wiping objects and manipulating hinges and flexible items without the need for new sample training, showcasing its high execution efficiency across various scenarios.

According to Gao Yang, “We adhere to the ‘data pyramid’ training philosophy. During the pre-training phase, we did not follow the traditional ‘world model’ approach of predicting every frame—this method is computationally expensive and inefficient. Instead, we opted for pre-training based on vast amounts of human internet video data, achieving better results with fewer parameters and significantly reducing computing costs.” In terms of data collection, Gao added, “We have reduced data collection costs by 90% through self-developed equipment, facilitating the large-scale acquisition of authentic real-world data. These accumulated technological capabilities have made Spirit v1.5 the world’s first performance-superior open-source foundational embodied model.” Spirit AI steadfastly promotes a “diversity” approach to its scaling strategy. To date, it has accumulated over 200,000 hours of diverse interactive data, covering dimensions such as internet videos, remote operations, and wearable data collection, with expectations to exceed 1 million hours by 2026. Its self-developed wearable data collection devices have now advanced to their fifth generation, reducing data costs to one-tenth of traditional methods, thereby eliminating barriers to large-scale collection.

Notably, through training on diverse “imperfect data,” the team has discovered a steeper scaling curve—data diversity is far more valuable than mere “cleanliness.” Leveraging this insight, Spirit AI continues to achieve breakthroughs in commercialization: the world’s first humanoid embodied intelligence production line has been operational at Ningde Times‘ Zhongzhou base, with the Mozi Robot becoming the core device of the line, successfully achieving mass production of nearly a thousand battery units with zero faults, demonstrating operational speed comparable to that of skilled workers, showcasing its ability to adapt to production uncertainties and exceed human flexible operational capabilities within milliseconds.

Relying on its 100% self-developed full-stack technological moat and extensive data accumulation, Spirit AI has not only established industry barriers but has also pushed “capability output” to its limits: transitioning from merely selling hardware to delivering comprehensive capabilities in perception, decision-making, and execution, facilitating rapid customization to accommodate different production lines and achieve global scalability. In the future, Spirit AI aims to cover various battery types and manufacturing processes, fundamentally reshaping the commercial boundaries of new energy manufacturing. Furthermore, its collaboration with JD.com has expanded these boundaries. The Mozi Robot is replacing humans in JD.com’s retail scenarios for interactive explanations and product demonstrations, with both parties exploring the potential for JD Cloud and Joyinside‘s large models in large retail networks, realizing a two-way empowerment of technology research and application scenarios.

Regarding commercialization speed, Han Fengtai stated in an interview with Late Point AI, “Between 2028 and 2029, more large companies in China will consider embodied intelligence a significant strategy, investing massive resources. Startups need to first prove that this market exists and that some mid-sized startups are genuinely emerging. Therefore, we constantly emphasize that speed is our only advantage. In China, startups must establish themselves as mid-sized firms before large companies enter the market (selling at least 100,000 robots annually and achieving profitability). Spirit AI’s goal is to become a mid-sized firm by 2030.”

In the future, Spirit AI will continue to increase its investments in foundational embodied models and real data systems, deepening the collaborative construction of the industrial ecosystem. From task-level intelligence to general embodied models, and from simulation to real-world driving, embodied intelligence is entering a crucial phase of technological industrialization.