The Belt 
Every industry that wants to be priced needs a unit. Steam had horsepower. Electricity had the kilowatt hour. Software has the token. Robotics has had nothing, which is why buyers cannot compare quotes, lenders cannot model returns and founders cannot prove that a machine doing a dance is worth more than a machine standing still. … Read more
The story Chinese embodied AI told investors has changed three times in a year. First a world model was enough. Then it had to be a world model with a factory pilot. Then it had to promise recursive self-improvement. Each turn made the pitch harder to sell, and the money that used to be spread … Read more
Embodied AI has a data problem that money cannot immediately solve, which is precisely why money keeps arriving. Jianzhi Robotics, a Beijing company founded in May 2025, closed a USD 100 million A+ round in the third quarter. It is the sixth round in fourteen months. The list of backers is unusually broad for a … Read more
Lingshu Zhifu, a Shanghai company founded in April 2025, has closed a seed and an angel round for a combined total above RMB 10 million. Oriza Holdings and Huawei Hubble took part in the seed, Oriza followed on in the angel, and Linglu Capital acted as sole financial adviser. The proceeds go to a pilot … Read more
Jiben Intelligent closed two funding rounds back to back for a combined total close to USD 10 million. Alphaist Partners and Yao Tu Capital led the respective rounds, with Jieli Angel and the controlling shareholder of a component supplier following. The company was founded in September 2026, which makes it weeks old at the point … Read more
Yitai Intelligent, a Chinese maker of high speed interconnect chips, said on 2 November that it closed a Series A of more than RMB 200 million. The A3 tranche was led by Wuxi Venture Capital, with Jintou Zhiyuan and Hongshan Capital following. The money goes into volume delivery of its edge switching silicon and into … Read more
Seven new Optimus roles surfaced on 30 October, pulled from Tesla’s own careers page by the account TeslaZoa. Read the job titles and the story changes. Data collection lead. Quality control technician, night shift. Lead engineering technician, afternoon shift. Senior mechanical engineer for actuator hardware validation. Metrology specialist. Battery interconnect manufacturing engineer. Production assistant. The … Read more
Chinese dexterous hand sales reached about 19,200 units in 2025, up 236.84 per cent year on year, and GGII expects 70,200 units in 2026. The volume is real. The deployment is not. Most of that volume is three-finger, six degree of freedom hardware sold into research laboratories and data collection operations. The share actually holding … Read more
UBTech, the Shenzhen company that carries the label of Hong Kong’s first listed humanoid maker, has taken its most expensive hardware layer in-house. Its controlled subsidiary Fenglong has established a wholly owned company, New Fenglong, which will build the joints, hands and thermal systems that UBTech previously bought or developed project by project. The new … Read more
While the manufacturing side of Chinese robotics argues about when the technology will land, the downstream has already found something that pays. It is not factories. It is stages, shopping centres, weddings and sports arenas. A year ago the daily rent for a humanoid reached RMB 30,000, and the industry talked about payback in six … Read more