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Shanghai-based embodied-AI startup 寅成智能 (Yincheng Intelligent) announced a ~¥100M Series A co-led by 华民投 and 上海半导体产投, with existing backer DCM (德同资本) topping up; 多维资本 advised. It is the company's second raise in roughly three months, after a $10M+ angel round led by DCM in May. Alongside the round, the company disclosed a ¥100M+ order from SF Express for general-purpose picking robots handling parcel induction (供包) at express transfer centers, with thousands of units planned over two years — billed as the industry's first scaled embodied-AI deployment order of this size. Founder 浦群妍 (Pu Qunyan) studied CS at Fudan and CMU, led Google AI products with >$1B in revenue, and was on Nuro's founding team.
Why it matters: These are logistics picking robots rather than bipedal humanoids, but the deployment is the story: express sorting is high-volume and structured — a realistic first beachhead for embodied AI, and a rare nine-figure order tied to real throughput rather than a data-collection center (see the CSRC scrutiny covered in our Sept 14 digest).
Sources: finance.sina.com.cn tech.ifeng.com
Tags: yincheng-intelligent funding deployment embodied-ai china
Xi'an Jiaotong University spinout 蓝虫具身 (BlueWorm Embodied, founded 2025) launched the Mantis Standard "小白" on Sept 14 — a modular humanoid starting at ¥9,800 (~$1,380). Specs: 22 DoF total, 7-DoF arms with 7 kg payload and 663 mm reach, <10 ms teleoperation latency, 1.4 m height with a 550 mm waist lift, a 3-DoF omnidirectional base at 3 m/s, ~3 h battery, and 4K/60fps binocular vision. Arm, base, torso and head modules snap together via quick-connect — pitched as "build a robot like a PC." The stack includes VR "量子" teleoperation and a BW-Brain controller built on its "虫洞" foundation models. Predecessor Mantis Pro won bronze in mixed-material sorting at the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games.
Why it matters: The starting price is roughly a quarter of Unitree's budget R1 (launched at ¥39,900) and an order of magnitude below typical research humanoids — expect labs, schools and the developer market to feel this first. Watch real-world reviews when units ship; at this price, actuator and sensor quality is the open question.
Sources: 36kr.com tech.ifeng.com
Tags: blueworm-embodied product-launch hardware humanoid china
Nanjing-based component maker 因克斯 (ENCOS) announced a ¥300M+ Series B on Sept 14. New investors include 中信金石, 纳爱斯, 苏创投, 华睿投资, 南京交控 and 华瑞创投; existing holders 复星创富, 深创投, 华控基金, 锦秋基金 and 普华资本 topped up. ENCOS builds integrated joint modules, dexterous hands (EC-DexHand-5F: 20 active DoF, 0.85 kg), communications modules and batteries for humanoids. It says it was the first in the industry to ship 100k+ joint modules in a year (2025). More than half the robots in April's Beijing humanoid half-marathon used its joints — the winner and runner-up were fully equipped — Physical Intelligence's robot arm uses its modules, and it supplied the Songyan robots at the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
Why it matters: Component suppliers remain the picks-and-shovels trade of the humanoid boom, and capital keeps concentrating on the few with proven volume shipments — the same localization trend behind the >70% domestic content in reducers and servo motors noted in our Sept 14 digest.
Sources: finance.eastmoney.com cls.cn
斜跃智能 (XieYue) has raised a multi-hundred-million-yuan Angel+ round from Linear Capital (线性资本), 钧山资本, 弘颐资本 and 隐山资本, widely reported Sept 14. It is the company's second round within seven months of its February 2026 founding; the angel round was led by Li Auto and 元璟资本. XieYue was founded by Chen Wei, Li Auto's former chief AI scientist and foundation-model head, and Zhang Xiao, a former Li Auto product-line president. The strategy: an embodied foundation model built on what it calls "Duplex Reasoning", commercialized first in hotels and eldercare facilities before homes, targeting laundry, tidying and cleaning tasks.
Why it matters: Autonomous-driving AI talent continues to rotate into embodied AI — the home-first general-purpose bet remains the most contested endgame in the sector, and XieYue's staged go-to-market (commercial venues before living rooms) is the pragmatic version of it.
Sources: d1ev.com finance.sina.com.cn
Shenzhen-based 艾欧智能 (IO-AI Tech) has raised a multi-hundred-million-yuan round from Shunwei Capital, Songhe Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group, plus a strategic investment from a leading robot OEM, according to a Shenzhen Guangming district government disclosure dated Sept 14. Founded in 2023, the company builds embodied-AI data infrastructure end to end: teleoperation systems, human data collection, and embodied data management.
Why it matters: As VLA (vision-language-action) model scaling runs into a real-world data wall, dedicated robot-data pipelines are becoming a funded category of their own — note the contrast with the regulator's skepticism toward data-collection-center economics in our Sept 14 digest.
Sources: szgm.gov.cn
Tags: io-ai-tech funding data-infrastructure teleoperation china
Microduck — the $400 open-source bipedal duck robot from Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics — took 10,500 orders in its first four days, 36Kr reported Sept 14. Resellers are already listing units at up to ¥5,567, roughly double retail. The robot ships with an open-source sim-to-real RL (reinforcement learning: train behaviors in simulation, transfer to hardware) pipeline so buyers can train their own behaviors.
Why it matters: Not a humanoid, but a clean consumer demand signal for low-cost embodied-AI platforms — and a stress test of whether open-source robotics can deliver at volume.
Sources: 36kr.com
Tags: hugging-face pollen-robotics consumer-robotics open-source
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