An AI sports-hardware maker has closed a several-hundred-million-yuan Series B, with Shanghai state-backed funds leading the round.
OFweek reported that Pangbot recently closed a several-hundred-million-yuan Series B. The round was led by Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment’s pioneer fund, with Yuanhe Pixel and Pudong Venture Capital following, returning backer Lanchi Ventures adding more, and Gaohu Capital as sole financial adviser. The money goes to sports large-model, motion-vision and training-decision R and D, plus global market expansion.
From ping-pong to a coaching brain
Pangbot was founded in Shanghai in 2019. Founder Zhang Haibo has over ten years in sports-training robot R and D and once led a national-team-grade ping-pong rally robot. The company started with ball-feeding robots and now spans professional to consumer grades, with over 300,000 global users, more than 1 million user-generated ball paths, and over 2 billion balls served. The round’s core target is the sports large model.
Pangbot’s architecture is a three-layer “hand-eye-brain”. The hand is the feed-and-supply system that replicates speed, spin and placement. The eye is motion-vision sensing that tracks the user’s movement and form in real time. The brain is the large-model coach that turns natural-language interaction into a personal training plan. On the Aura all-in-one coach robot launched in May 2026, this architecture already shipped, and the product passed 1 million US dollars on Kickstarter within five hours, reaching over 4 million dollars in total.
Extending from ping-pong to tennis, pickleball and padel leans on reused underlying tech. Pangbot’s ball-physics, trajectory and human-motion analysis cores moved to tennis for about 10 per cent of the original R and D cost. Overseas revenue first exceeded domestic in 2025, and the company passed 20 million yuan in single-month sales during the 2024 Black Friday period. The 2 billion serves and 1 million user ball paths form the data moat: more devices sold means sharper AI feedback. Shanghai state capital leading, with Pudong Venture in, signals the city’s push into the AI-hardware and sports-tech crossover. With overseas already past domestic, the channel risk is largely cleared. The open question is whether the hand-eye-brain stack keeps the same data efficiency beyond tennis.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek 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/2026-10/ART-8321203-12005-30706751.html.