The Belt 
BYD Explorer No.1, a dedicated car-carrier vessel BYD uses to ship vehicles to overseas markets. Chinese cars cost far more abroad than at home. Take the Xpeng MONA L03, launched in Munich on July 16. Its pure-electric version starts at 35,600 euros in Germany (about 276,000 yuan); the extended-range version starts at 38,600 euros (about … Read more
Date Round Amount Key Investors Aug 13, 2019 Strategic Tens of millions RMB CAS Star, Tsinghua University Asset Management, Fortune Capital, Huakong Fund, Jiangmen VC, Turing Ventures Sep 14, 2021 Series A Hundreds of millions RMB Luster LightVision, Xinglian Capital (Z Fund), Beijing Dafan, Tongzhi Investment, Xingtang Tongzhi, Rongpin Investment Sep 26, 2022 Series B … Read more
Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin presenting Kimi Chat’s long-context model capabilities. After DeepSeek, another Chinese model has rattled the United States. On July 22, four things happened in a single day. Michael Kratsios, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly accused Moonshot AI on X of “large-scale distillation” of American … Read more
Figure Robotics’ F02 humanoid robot featuring a high-degree-of-freedom dexterous hand.Illustration: humanoid robot dexterous-hand durability concerns. (Source: Sohu IT) China’s humanoid robots are being tested by reality, and reality is winning. A manager at one robotics firm, whom we will call Wang Hao, told Chinese business outlet Yicai that the dexterous hand his company sources from … Read more
Dobot expects first-half 2026 revenue of roughly 300 to 330 million yuan, up 94.65 to 114.12 percent year on year, with gross profit of 140 to 170 million yuan, up 84.73 to 124.31 percent, the company said in a recent profit alert. On top of its scaling collaborative-robot business, Dobot’s embodied-AI business is moving from … Read more
At WAIC 2026 in Shanghai on July 17, Shenzhen company AI Squared showcased its upgraded in-house brain-inspired large model NeuroVLA, the open-source AlphaBrain Platform, and AlphaBot 2 running the latest robot brain — demonstrating real productivity in industrial manufacturing and new retail. Often called China’s most “Tesla-like” robotics firm, AI Squared drew a constant crowd … Read more
General-purpose humanoid robot company LimX Dynamics, headquartered in Shenzhen, has closed a near-200 million dollar Pre-IPO financing round at a post-money valuation of 15 billion yuan (about 2 billion dollars), joining the ranks of China’s super unicorns, the company said recently. It has raised 400 million dollars in total over the past six months, laying … Read more
On June 30, Ubtech held its 2026 global launch in Shenzhen, unveiling its “human-robot symbiosis” strategy for the next decade and the full-size ultra-bionic humanoid series “YouWorld U1” — a half-body U1 Lite, a high-spec full-body U1 Pro, and a high-dynamics full-body U1 Ultra. Pricing: U1 Lite at 119,800 yuan; U1 Pro at 169,800 yuan; … Read more
Shenzhen-based Dobot has begun deploying large batches of its humanoid robots across industrial sites worldwide, the company told Shenzhen News on July 24. The machines are running live validation and production tasks — loading and unloading, high-precision sorting, fine assembly, and finished-goods recycling — inside real manufacturing environments. The move sends a clear signal: humanoid … Read more
In the midst of a global humanoid robot boom, a sobering reminder of how hard the robotics business actually is: Vicarious Surgical, a US surgical robot startup that raised $300 million from investors including Bill Gates and Jerry Yang, has filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 2014 by two MIT graduates, Vicarious set out to build … Read more