StarMap secures an additional 2 billion yuan in Series B+ funding, with funding events in the embodied intelligence sector surging by 63% in 2026.

《The Daily Economic News》 reporters learned that since the beginning of 2026, funding enthusiasm in China’s embodied intelligence sector has continued to rise steadily. In just the first three months, the financing scale for the sector has already neared 30 billion yuan, and the trend of capital consolidating toward leading companies has become increasingly evident.

Against this backdrop, star company in embodied intelligence, Xinghai Tu, has recently received another round of capital reinforcement in China. After completing a 1 billion yuan Series B round in February this year, the company has now also announced that it has secured a 2 billion yuan Series B+ round, with its valuation surpassing 20 billion yuan, making it the embodied intelligence company with the highest valuation in China at present.

《The Daily Economic News》 reporters learned from industry insiders that this round of financing brings together multiple forces, including industrial capital, top-tier long-term funds, national team funds, and first-line PE institutions. The funds will comprehensively ramp up efforts in foundational model research and global ecosystem deployment.

In the view of industry participants, this financing round not only refreshes the valuation ceiling in China’s embodied intelligence industry, but also has become a vivid snapshot of how sector capital is accelerating toward leading players since the start of the year—reflecting capital markets’ reassessment of the value of embodied intelligence transitioning from technical exploration to large-scale commercialization.

Some interviewed experts also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry is still in the early-stage research and development phase and has not yet reached the stage of large-scale commercialization and deployment. From 2026 to 2027, industrial scenarios are the most important settings with the greatest potential to carry commercial deployment of embodied robots at a certain scale and to demonstrate their intelligent capabilities.

Within two months, Xinghai Tu continuously announced two rounds of financing

Yet another leading embodied intelligence company announced financing.

Today, Xinghai Tu disclosed information regarding its Series B+ financing, showing that this round secured 2 billion yuan in funding. This is the company’s second consecutive large round of financing completed more than a month after the last one, and its valuation also surpassed 20 billion yuan, making it the company with the highest valuation in China’s embodied intelligence industry. Compared with the financing valuation before the Spring Festival, Xinghai Tu achieved nearly a doubling of valuation within just over a month, becoming the embodied intelligence sector company with the fastest valuation increase after the Spring Festival in 2026.

Before this, one of the most sought-after embodied intelligence companies in the market—Ubii Technology—had a post-investment valuation of 12.7 billion yuan in its final funding round before going public. In March of this year, Ubii officially submitted its STAR Market IPO application to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. After the IPO, the company’s valuation is expected to reach 42 billion yuan.‌

From the lineup of investors, industrial giants, long-term funds spanning levels 1 and 2, national team funds, and first-line PE institutions all stepped in. Among them, industrial capital such as Huading Technology, Lansi Technology, and Saxin Investment participated. As an important strategic partner of Xinghai Tu, Lansi Technology will conduct in-depth coordination with the company in the areas of hardware supply chain and large-scale mass production, accelerating full-scenario penetration of its products.

On the side of patient long-term capital, long-term funds including Xiuyuan Capital, Hongzhang Investment, and Yuhai Capital have strongly joined. For national team funding, institutions such as Financial Street Capital, Jinpu Investment, Beijing Kechuang, and Guoyuan Equity joined to provide support. First-line PE under CICC Capital, as well as Puhua Capital, Hongtai Fund, and GF Qianhe, also placed bets this time. Not only do they provide ample funding assurances, they also help promote commercialization and deployment of the invested companies.

Regarding the intended use of the funds from this financing round, Xinghai Tu stated clearly that it will comprehensively increase investment in foundational model research and global ecosystem deployment, with a focus on ensuring full leadership in its vision-language-action (VLA) model and world model under a real-data route. At the same time, it will accelerate the company’s leapfrog evolution from “developer’s first choice” to “a benchmark in productivity,” promoting large-scale commercial deployment of embodied intelligence technology in the physical world.

According to information from Xinghai Tu, in 2025 its global market share in the field of wheeled dual-arm robots ranked first. It served more than 150 embodied intelligence developer partner organizations, with a leading coverage rate exceeding 90%. On the productivity scenario side, the company has already focused on five core vertical scenarios—such as moving and transporting, grasping and picking, and placement—successfully running orders at the thousand-unit level, and has reached in-depth cooperation with industry-leading companies in fields such as industrial handling and logistics sorting. In 2026, it will officially start mass deployment at the ten-thousand-unit scale.

**Three-layer logic supports the valuation surge, 2026 embodied intelligence faces **a “small commercial test”

As one of the investors in this round, a Hongtai Fund investor said in an interview with 《The Daily Economic News》 reporters that the embodied intelligence and humanoid robot sectors will be the largest hardware platform opportunities after smartphones. From a long-cycle perspective, the embodied intelligence sector is still in the early stage. We are increasingly seeing the importance of foundational model innovation to companies. At the same time, after three years of technological development, 2026 will inevitably bring a “small test” for commercialization for start-up companies in embodied intelligence.

The Hongtai Fund investor said, “Xinghai Tu is one of the few teams we see in this space that truly possesses full-stack closed-loop capabilities of ‘body + model + data.’ Over the past two years, the team led by Gao Jiyang has demonstrated strong execution ability and strategic selection capability. Xinghai Tu is the first to run the positive flywheel of ‘hardware shipments → scenario data inflow → continuous model iteration,’ which is the core path for embodied intelligence to move from the lab to industrialization.”

When asked about the reasons behind Xinghai Tu’s continued valuation increase, the company’s负责人, in interviews with media including 《The Daily Economic News》, said that it mainly stems from three underlying logics.

First, R&D investment has shifted from “efficiency” to “effectiveness.” In the past half year, the company’s R&D expenses reached several times the amount since its establishment. With data, hardware, and algorithms all prepared, it has actively promoted large-scale development in the industry. The rapid progress in performance and technology has also brought about a reversal in market expectations. Second, systematized R&D capabilities have become prominent. The world model Fast-WAM launched by Xinghai Tu has been recognized by core figures from Silicon Valley, proving the company’s ability to achieve ongoing technological breakthroughs. Third, the pricing reconstruction of large model assets in the Hong Kong stock market has reshaped the valuation system of the primary market. The capital market is evaluating the value of embodied large model companies from a more medium-to-long-term perspective. As Xinghai Tu is a genuine embodied large model asset, its scarcity has been recognized by capital.

The负责人 also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry chain is long and involves many elements, requiring companies to become “six-sided warriors.” Traditional large factories only have advantages in certain links, making it difficult to achieve a dimensionality-reduction strike purely through capital advantages. Therefore, this sector is especially suitable for start-up companies to develop. Xinghai Tu expects that in the future, among China’s top ten embodied intelligence leading companies, at least half will grow from start-up companies. Based on this judgment, this year the company will also take the lead in setting up an industry fund. Building on having already invested in nearly 10 early-stage companies in the industry, it will focus on downstream scenario application-oriented companies and frontier technology-oriented companies, and work to build an open and win-win industrial ecosystem.

Capital-intensive deployment, data is the key to breaking industry constraints

Xinghai Tu’s consecutive large rounds of financing are not an isolated case; they are a snapshot of the capital boom in China’s embodied intelligence sector in 2026. As the valuations of leading companies continue to rise, the overall industry’s financing activity has also seen a significant increase.

《The Daily Economic News》 reporters, based on statistics from Qinzong Jiachuan CVSource, found that as of April 1 this year, the number of financing events in the robotics sector has already exceeded 160. Compared with the same period last year, it surged by 63%. In terms of investment amounts, investments in the robotics sector are often relatively large, with financings in the hundreds of millions or even tens of millions of yuan being common, and compared with the same period last year, there has also been a notable increase.

Li Jiaxin, a mid-level researcher at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Institute for AI Application Research, told reporters that the most core reason embodied intelligence has continued to receive capital injection this year is that the determinacy of industrial value has increased significantly, gradually moving from “showcasing in the laboratory” to “really doing work in factories.” However, the embodied intelligence industry is still in the early-stage R&D phase and has not yet reached the stage of large-scale deployment. Industry focus is still on improving intelligence, and the key bottleneck for improving intelligence lies in data. Therefore, it can be seen that the industry is continuing to explore paths such as remote operation, simulation, and UMI data.

Another mid-level researcher, Zhang Zhen, added that the core constraints currently limiting industry development are insufficient technical capability and immature hardware at the engineering level. In terms of technical capability, embodied intelligence today still has weak generalization ability and lacks sufficient memory planning capability for long-horizon tasks. These limitations in capability are fundamentally tied to insufficient data. In addition, hardware costs and reliability are also key bottlenecks at the engineering level. “We believe that in 2026–2027, industrial scenarios are the most promising settings to carry large-scale commercial deployment of embodied robots at a certain scale, and to best showcase their intelligent capabilities.”

Duan Lei, research director at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Institute for AI Application Research, pointed out that in the embodied intelligence field, the most certain competitive advantage, at least for now, is likely still who can solve the data problem first. “Whoever can systematically connect the data collection, annotation, simulation, and closed-loop data return, train stable and usable embodied ‘intelligence,’ and then ensure that there are no obvious weaknesses in hardware and product forms will have a better chance to be the first to break through and run ahead.”

He predicted that the leading companies in the future may be those that form a highly integrated embodied intelligence company, with algorithm, data, and computing power all controlled in-house, as well as end-to-end control over the whole-unit hardware and operating system—something like a “robot original equipment manufacturer with integrated software and hardware.” Another possibility is the emergence of more platformized or modular roles, focusing on a general embodied intelligence operating system and the perception—decision—control stack, working with many industry partners to deploy.