LionBot (Shenzhen) Robotics has closed a tens-of-millions-yuan strategic round led by Shenzhen Lifud, with Yunyue Capital as exclusive adviser, and struck a research partnership with a team at Southern University of Science and Technology.
The gap is the middleware
The team came from UBTech and Pudu, balancing algorithm and factory-delivery experience. Founder and CEO Zhang Jian argues the real shortage is not the model or the robot body, but the middleware connecting model, machine and the physical world. So LionBot never bet on a single hardware product. It built data capture, skill training and scenario iteration as base capabilities.
Lifud is not a passive backer. With two industrial parks, three R&D centres and more than 10,000 enterprise customers across 70-plus countries, it opens its production lines and overseas channels. The startup gets a live stream of real industrial samples, not just cash.
Capturing data without the robot
LionBot’s LA Capture System is a wearable rig. A worker’s normal routine, first-person view, hand motion, spatial position and touch, is recorded without tying up an expensive robot. A processing platform then slices action sequences, aligns multimodal timestamps and grades quality, turning labour into training assets already running on Lifud’s floor.
The bet is that traditional teleoperation costs hundreds of yuan per hour and simulation decays on real lines. A wearable that rides along with the worker breaks the data famine without stopping production. The limitation is real too: quality depends on the worker, and cleaning still takes engineering.
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Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robotics report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-09/ART-8321202-8420-30701510.html.
Translated and adapted from OFweek Robotics (https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-09/ART-8321202-8420-30701510.html).