On 29 September, BlueBug Embodied closed a tens-of-millions angel round led by Xi’an Hi-tech Venture Capital, to fund production lines, product development, scenario expansion and team growth.
Founded in March 2025 with support from Xi’an Jiaotong University, BlueBug is a full-stack embodied-AI company whose core team pairs XJTU masters and PhDs with veteran robot engineers. Founder and chief executive Cong Yao is a serial entrepreneur with more than a decade in robotics.
Its four self-built platforms cover the whole loop. The Chunjian architecture platform reaches about 70 per centunderlying reuse across mechanics, controls, algorithms and embedded software, with sub-platforms for chassis and electronic control. The Liangzi tele-operation platform drives latency down to 10 milliseconds with mixed-reality interaction and atomic skill libraries, and supports 5G and broadband global links. The Chongdong model platform carries the BW-Brain foundation model on real, imitation and synthetic data. The Fengchao cloud links body, tele-op and model for collect, train and push in one pipeline.
On 14 September BlueBug launched its modular humanoid Mantis Standard, nicknamed Xiaobai, from RMB 9,800, positioned as an out-of-box embodied-AI development platform. Unlike bipedal show-ponies, Mantis chose wheels and a focus on upper-body work, for faster commercialisation, lower cost and steadier volume.
Xiaobai stands 1.4 metres with 22 degrees of freedom, 7 per arm, a 7 kg arm load, repeatability of plus or minus 1 mm and a three-degree omni base, with 3 hours of battery. Variants scale up, Pro at 10 kg arm load and 1.7 metre height, Ultra at 15 kg for high-end industry.
BlueBug’s path is tele-op first, data as byproduct. Let tele-op robots earn in real scenarios, let the data accumulate, iterate the model, lift autonomy, feed more scenarios. It has signed hundreds of units a year with a leading coffee-machine maker and sold robots to universities including Xidian, XJTU and China University of Mining and Technology, plus industrial pilots with Shaanxi Tourism, Proton Motors and others.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://www.gasgoo.com/apps/50640d4b55d5cba175fb84f15d679f19/robot/news/70473618-seeds-%E8%A5%BF%E4%BA%A4%E5%A4%A7%E7%A1%95%E5%8D%9A%E5%9B%A2%E9%98%9F%E9%80%A0%E5%85%B7%E8%BA%AB%E6%9C%BA%E5%99%A8%E4%BA%BA%E8%8E%B7%E6%95%B0%E5%8D%83%E4%B8%87%E5%85%83%E8%9E%8D%E8%B5%84/.