Star Map secures an additional 2 billion yuan in Series B+ funding, with financing events in the embodied intelligence track surging by 63% in 2026

National Daily Economic News Reporter: Li Lei National Daily Economic News Editor: Peng Shui Ping

A reporter from the “Daily Economic News” has learned that since the beginning of 2026, the financing activity in the domestic embodied intelligence sector has continued to rise, with the financing scale in the first three months reaching nearly 30 billion yuan, and the trend of capital flowing toward leading companies becoming increasingly evident.

Against this backdrop, recently, the leading domestic embodied intelligence company Xinghai Tu has once again received increased capital support. After completing a Series B funding of 1 billion yuan in February this year, the company announced another 2 billion yuan Series B+ funding, with a valuation surpassing 20 billion yuan, making it the highest-valued embodied intelligence company in China currently.

According to industry sources, this round of financing brought together industry capital, long-term top funds, national team funds, and top-tier private equity institutions, with funds fully increasing investment in foundational model research and global ecosystem deployment.

Industry experts believe that this financing not only sets a new ceiling for valuation in China’s embodied intelligence industry but also vividly reflects the acceleration of capital concentration among leading companies in the sector since the beginning of the year. It also indicates a market revaluation of the value of embodied intelligence from technological exploration to large-scale implementation.

Some interviewed experts also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry is still in the early research and development stage and has not yet reached the stage of large-scale deployment. The industrial scenarios most likely to support commercialized embodied robots with certain scale and demonstrate their intelligent capabilities are expected to be the most important in 2026–2027.

Within 2 months, Xinghai Tu announced two consecutive funding rounds

Another leading embodied intelligence company announced funding.

Today, Xinghai Tu disclosed information about its Series B+ funding, showing that it secured 2 billion yuan in this round. This is the company’s second large-scale funding in just over a month, and its valuation has also exceeded 20 billion yuan, making it the highest-valued company in China’s embodied intelligence industry. Compared to the valuation before the Spring Festival financing, Xinghai Tu’s valuation has nearly doubled in just over a month, making it the fastest-growing company in the embodied intelligence sector since the 2026 Spring Festival.

Prior to this, one of the hottest embodied intelligence companies in the market—Yushu Technology—had a pre-IPO valuation of 12.7 billion yuan. In March this year, Yushu officially submitted an application for an IPO on the STAR Market, with an estimated post-IPO valuation of 42 billion yuan.

In terms of investor lineup, industry giants, first- and second-tier long-term funds, national team funds, and top-tier PE institutions have all participated. Notably, industry capital such as Huateng Technology, Lens Technology, and Silicon Core Investment have entered the market. As an important partner of Xinghai Tu, Lens Technology will collaborate deeply in hardware supply chain and large-scale mass production, accelerating product penetration across all scenarios.

Regarding the use of funds in this round, Xinghai Tu clearly stated that it will fully increase investment in foundational model research and global ecosystem deployment, focusing on advancing the company’s visual-language-action (VLA) models and world models based on real data, aiming for comprehensive leadership. It will also accelerate the company’s leap from “developer’s first choice” to “productivity benchmark,” promoting large-scale commercialization of embodied intelligence technology in the physical world.

According to Xinghai Tu, in 2025, its global market share in wheeled dual-arm robots ranked first, serving over 150 embodied intelligence developer partners, with a top coverage rate exceeding 90%. In productivity scenarios, the company has focused on five core verticals such as handling, moving, grasping, and placing, completing thousands of orders, and has established deep cooperation with industry leaders in industrial handling and logistics sorting. In 2026, it will officially begin large-scale deployment of tens of thousands of units.

Triple logic supports valuation growth, embodied intelligence in 2026 faces a “small test” of commercialization

As one of the investors in this round, Hongtai Fund investor told “Daily Economic News” that embodied intelligence and humanoid robot sectors will be the largest hardware platform opportunities after smartphones. From a long-term perspective, the embodied intelligence sector is still in its early stages, and we increasingly see the importance of foundational model innovation for companies. After three years of technological development, 2026 will inevitably be a “small test” of commercialization for startups in embodied intelligence.

The investor from Hongtai Fund said, “Xinghai Tu is one of the few teams in this sector that truly possesses a full-stack closed-loop capability of ‘core + model + data.’ Over the past two years, led by Gao Jiyang, the team has demonstrated strong execution and strategic decision-making. Xinghai Tu has pioneered the positive flywheel of ‘hardware shipment → scene data feedback → continuous model iteration,’ which is the core path for embodied intelligence to move from laboratory to industry.”

Regarding the reasons for Xinghai Tu’s continuous valuation increase, the company’s leader told media including “Daily Economic News” that it mainly stems from three fundamental logics.

First, R&D investment has shifted from “efficiency” to “effectiveness.” Over the past six months, the company’s R&D expenses have multiplied several times since its founding. With data, hardware, algorithms, and other elements ready, the company actively promotes industry-scale development. Rapid progress in performance and technology has also reversed market expectations; second, systematic R&D capabilities have become prominent. Xinghai Tu’s world model Fast-WAM has been recognized by core figures in Silicon Valley, proving the company’s ability for continuous technological breakthroughs; third, the pricing restructuring of large models in Hong Kong stocks has redefined the valuation system in the primary market. The capital market is evaluating the value of embodied large models from a more medium- and long-term perspective, and Xinghai Tu, as a genuine embodied large model company, has its scarcity recognized by capital.

The leader also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry chain is long and involves many elements, requiring companies to become “hexagon warriors.” Traditional large companies only have advantages in certain segments, making it difficult to achieve a dimensionality reduction through capital advantage. Therefore, this sector is particularly suitable for startups. Xinghai Tu predicts that in the future, at least half of the top ten embodied intelligence leading companies in China will come from current startups. Based on this judgment, the company will also lead the formation of an industry fund this year, building on investments in nearly ten early-stage industry companies, focusing on downstream scenario application companies and frontier technology firms, to create an open and win-win industrial ecosystem.

Capital-intensive deployment, data is key to industry breakthrough

Xinghai Tu’s consecutive large-scale financings are not an isolated case but a microcosm of the capital boom in the embodied intelligence sector in 2026. As the valuations of leading companies continue to rise, the overall industry financing activity has also surged significantly.

According to data from Tianzhong Jiacuan CVSource, as of April 1, this year, there have been over 160 financing events in the robotics sector, a 63% increase compared to the same period last year. In terms of investment amount, investments in robotics tend to be large, with many financings exceeding 100 million or even several billion yuan, showing a significant increase compared to last year.

Li Jiaxin, a mid-level researcher at the Greater Bay Area Artificial Intelligence Application Research Institute, told reporters that the core reason for the continued capital injection into embodied intelligence this year is the significant increase in industry value certainty, gradually shifting from “laboratory performance” to “real factory work.” However, the industry is still in the early R&D stage and has not yet reached large-scale deployment. The focus remains on improving intelligence, with data being the key bottleneck. Therefore, ongoing exploration around remote operation, simulation, and UMI data routes can be observed.

Another mid-level researcher, Zhang Zhen, added that the main current constraints are insufficient technical capabilities and immature hardware at the engineering level. On the technical side, current embodied intelligence suffers from weak generalization ability and insufficient long-term task memory planning. The key limitation in capabilities is the lack of data, and hardware costs and reliability are also critical engineering bottlenecks. “We believe that industrial scenarios in 2026–2027 are the most promising for supporting the commercial deployment of embodied robots at scale and demonstrating their intelligence.”

Luan Lei, Director of Research at the Greater Bay Area Artificial Intelligence Application Research Institute, pointed out that the most certain competitive advantage in the embodied intelligence field currently likely lies in who can solve data problems first. “Who can systematically connect data collection, annotation, simulation, and feedback loops, train stable and usable embodied ‘intelligence,’ and have no obvious shortcomings in hardware and product form will have a better chance to lead.”

He predicts that future leading companies may be highly integrated embodied intelligence firms, controlling algorithms, data, computing power, hardware, and operational systems themselves—similar to “software-hardware integrated robot manufacturing plants”; another possibility is the emergence of more platform- or modular-based roles, focusing on general embodied intelligence operating systems, perception-decision-control stacks, and collaborating with numerous industry partners for deployment.

Daily Economic News