A humanoid robot weighing 37.15 kg pulled a 1,434 kg car 9.92 metres on two legs in Beijing, setting a Guinness World Record for the heaviest vehicle pulled by a humanoid robot under 40 kg, its developers said. The robot was powered by Thor, a whole-body control model jointly developed by Chinese robotics firm XYZ Embodied AI Co. (XYZ), Ltd. and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI). The challenge took place in Beijing’s Yizhuang. Developers said the feat was not merely a display of brute force. The core difficulty was maintaining balance and coordinating the whole body while withstanding a large, changing external force. Unlike running, jumping or dancing, pulling a car is a strong-interaction task: the robot’s movement...
Boston Dynamics has introduced a new four-fingered hand for its Atlas humanoid, a 13-degree-of-freedom, directly actuated design intended for mass production. The hand marks a strategic shift. Earlier Atlas hands had seven degrees of freedom and were designed to grasp a wide range of objects. The new version focuses on manipulating them. “We considered many, many designs,” said Alberto Rodriguez, director of robot behavior for Atlas. “It boils down to a trade-off of competing objectives.” The design omits a pinky and is tailored for high-fidelity simulation and sim-to-real reinforcement learning. It uses a single actuator type, fully encapsulated joints and no fragile cables crossing joints. Boston Dynamics said the hand can slide the thumb tip along and across the other...
Chinese robotics firms LEJU Robot and Heyman have jointly launched a scene-oriented solution centred on a general-purpose humanoid robot body and a multi-fingered dexterous hand, aiming to eliminate the need for custom end-effector swaps across diverse industrial tasks. The system addresses common pain points such as trade-offs between payload and precision, low gesture-development efficiency, and difficult redeployment, the companies said. The integrated dexterous hand features a variable-configuration design that supports seven plus grip modes – including two-finger pinch, internal expansion, enveloping grasp, and two-handed hold – on the same hardware. It delivers a payload of at least 24 kg and a repeated positioning accuracy of ≤0.03 mm, outperforming the industry norm of 0.2 mm. This allows a single manipulator to...
Lyte, a U.S.-based physical AI perception infrastructure startup, has raised $165 million in a Series C funding round, valuing the company at $1.6 billion post-money, the company said. The round was led by Maverick Silicon, with participation from existing investors including Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, and Ora Global. Proceeds will be used to boost sensor chip production, scale its LyteVision integrated perception platform, and expand its workforce. Founded in 2021, Lyte emerged from stealth in January this year and had previously raised approximately $107 million. The company develops chips, multimodal sensors, and spatial perception software to help robots navigate environments more safely. Its flagship unified spatial intelligence platform, LyteGalaxy, integrates sensors, compute, software, and algorithms into...
Briefs
Geek+ unit to buy 20% stake in physical AI startup SEEN·E Robotics for 50 mln yuan
Geekplus (02590.HK) said in a filing that its wholly owned subsidiary Beijing Geekplus has signed an investment agreement to subscribe for a 20% equity interest in SEEN·E Robotics after a capital increase, for 50 million yuan.
SEEN·E Robotics, founded on Jan. 26, 2026, focuses on physical AI and aims to build a general-purpose embodied brain for real-world tasks.
Based on the investment amount and the 20% stake, SEEN·E Robotics's post-money valuation would be about 250 million yuan.
U.S. warehouse robotics startup Ultra said it has raised $62 million and will deepen its partnership with robotics company Physical Intelligence.
The financing consists of a $50 million Series A round led by Framework Ventures, with Y Combinator participating, and a $12 million seed round led by Y Combinator and Next View.
Founded in June 2024 and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, Ultra focuses on industrial and warehouse applications. Its OP1 industrial robot can load and seal various types of mailing bags and perform packing, sorting and kitting, the company said.
Shenzhen embodied AI startup KNOWIN raises Angel+++ round led by JD-linked fund
Shenzhen-based consumer embodied AI company KNOWIN said it has completed an Angel+++ round worth hundreds of millions of yuan, led by a JD.com-linked fund, with Loyal Valley Capital, Nanshan Strategic Emerging Investment and Walden International participating.
Proceeds will focus on expanding training data to improve GLOW's generalization across tasks, objects and home environments; deepening robot hardware R&D and advancing engineering validation and mass-production preparation for KNOWIN-X1; and recruiting senior embodied AI talent.
KNOWIN has now completed five financing rounds: seed, Angel, Angel+, Angel++ and Angel+++. Its Angel++ round raised 500 million yuan, with Matrix Partners China and Redpoint China among investors.
Founded in 2025, KNOWIN targets consumer home scenarios and aims to build embodied AI systems with physical bodies that can form a “perception-generation-execution-evolution” loop and interact continuously in real environments. Its folding dual-arm robot, KNOWIN-X1, is about 1.4 metres tall unfolded, 40 cm folded, weighs about 50 kg and has self-developed arms with a 6 kg payload.
China tactile robotics startup AGIMind Robotics raises tens of mln yuan in angel round
Shenzhen-based tactile robotics startup AGIMind Robotics said it has raised tens of millions of yuan in an angel funding round, with investors including Lihe Capital, Hefei Industrial Investment and other institutional investors.
The proceeds will be mainly used for production line construction, mass-production capacity optimization and R&D of tactile intelligent systems, the company said.
Founded in 2025, AGIMind Robotics focuses on tactile sensing and fine manipulation skills for robots. It has launched the Lux visuotactile sensor series.
Founder and CEO Zhang Yazhan holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China and a PhD in robotics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Manus parent Butterfly Effect raises over $500 mln in record China agent-native funding
Butterfly Effect, the parent of AI agent Manus, said it has completed a new funding round of more than $500 million, the largest ever raised by a China-based agent-native startup.
The round was led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing investors Tencent, HongShan and ZhenFund also participating.
The funding news follows Manus's launch of Manus 2.0 and Cue, a multi-agent group chat app, on Sept. 29. It was the company's first major update since it formally resumed independent operations on Sept. 1.
Manus 2.0 uses Cascade, its in-house agent framework. The framework allows user-created projects to stay lightweight from the outset and invoke relevant specialized capabilities only when tasks actually require them.
Ashish Kumar, Former Tesla AI Lead Launches Robotics Startup
Ashish Kumar, who previously led Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot AI initiative, announced the founding of a new startup focused on developing non-humanoid robots. The venture is reportedly seeking to raise approximately $100 million in funding to innovate within the robotics industry.
Nvidia in talks to invest another $1 bln in humanoid robot startup Figure
Nvidia is in talks to invest an additional $1 billion in humanoid robot company Figure, extending a strategy that has shifted the chipmaker from financial investor to core technology supplier to the startup. Nvidia previously joined Figure's Series C round and provides hardware support for training and deploying Figure's Helix AI model. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has called the partnership a "robot flywheel": models are trained on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, validated on its Isaac Sim simulation platform and ultimately deployed on Nvidia GPUs inside the robots. The closed loop is accelerating Nvidia's strategic push into physical AI.
Zhongda Leader plans up to 530 mln yuan A-share private placement for embodied intelligence, automation projects
Zhongda Leader Intelligent Transmission Co Ltd disclosed a preliminary plan for a 2026 targeted private placement of A-shares, seeking to raise up to 530 million yuan, with proceeds mainly earmarked for two production projects—embodied intelligence joint modules and distributed intelligent actuator units for industrial automation—and an R&D center upgrade.
The company said the private placement is aimed at capturing opportunities in emerging industries such as embodied intelligence and seizing the window for domestic substitution of core components.
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