In 2026 the robotics capital wave is heating up, with Unitree clearing its listing in just 73 days and more than 46 robotics firms now queuing for Hong Kong. Shanghai’s embodied-AI player Kepler Robotics chose a different path: on 5 June, listed company Hangzhou Kelin voted to acquire a stake and take control through an industrial merger.
Why Kelin picked Kepler
The power and electricity track is the most certain, largest humanoid landing spot, and State Grid tenders are concentrated in the tens of billions of yuan, shifting competition toward scenario fit and scaled delivery. Kelin has spent years in the grid and energy system, holding national grid government-enterprise channels, industry access and mature project experience, the scarce resource for reaching that scene. Through Kelin, Kepler’s proven aerial work, inspection, heavy logistics and complex-environment solutions can be imported into grid systems fast, targeting power inspection, live-line work, emergency response and warehousing.
Orders before hype
Kepler’s 2025 orders were about 4 million yuan of pilots, essentially scenario tuning. In 2026 a single quarter already exceeded half of 2025’s full-year revenue, and cumulative backlog passed 47 million yuan, all repeat commercial orders from customers themselves, across automotive, precision machining, smart logistics, aerial work, services and training. On technology, Kepler built a 100,000-plus full-modal real-world dataset and a force-touch multimodal model, claiming 98.3 per cent precision-assembly and 99.7 per cent flexible-grasp success against an industry norm of 25 to 30 per cent.
Its product matrix includes the Mechanical Qilin load-carrying quadruped, with a static load up to 300 kilograms, over eight hours of battery life and 45-degree climbing, able to team with the 75-kilogram K2 humanoid for border logistics and emergency supply. The thesis is that deep scenario value, not the IPO race, is what compounds: a ‘technology plus industry’ model may become the real direction for embodied intelligence.
Read the original report (OFweek Robotics)
Translated and adapted from OFweek Robotics (robot.ofweek.com).