ChineseRoboticsStartupSpiritAIRaises$145Million

Chinese robotics startup Spirit AI raised another 1 billion yuan ($145 million) in fresh funding, just over a month after completing two financing rounds that pushed its valuation to more than 10 billion yuan.

The massive capital injection underscores a surging investment frenzy in China’s humanoid robotics sector, where top-tier firms are rapidly amassing multibillion-dollar valuations and rushing toward initial public offerings despite lingering commercialization challenges.

The latest funding round, announced on Tuesday, was co-led by Shunwei Capital and Yunfeng Capital, with participation from investors including Galaxy Yuanhui Investment, Turing Ventures and Xinding Capital.

Founded in January 2024, Spirit AI focuses on developing artificial intelligence “brains” for robots. In January 2026, the startup open-sourced its Spirit v1.5 model, and its self-developed wearable data collection device has cut data collection costs to one-tenth of traditional methods.

Co-founder Gao Yang, a University of California, Berkeley graduate and assistant professor at Tsinghua University, told Caixin in a February interview that while developers previously believed training data needed to be perfectly “clean,” meaning that actions of data collectors had to be standardized and smooth, everyday or even “messy“ data has proven more effective. For example, he instructed data collectors to perform casual actions, such as accidentally knocking over a cup and picking it back up, as such scenarios are more valuable for training models. By April 2026, the company’s data team had expanded to about 1,000 people.

Spirit AI’s products are already seeing early commercial deployment. In March 2026, the company signed an agreement with JD.com Inc. to deploy its self-developed Moz robots as coffee makers at JD MALL retail stores. Previously, in December 2025, the company deployed its humanoid robot Xiao Mo to perform end-of-line functional tests on battery packs at a facility operated by Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL).

However, Gao stressed that robots still lack generalization capabilities and the costs of using them in new applications remain high. He added that the robots operating at the CATL facility have reached the proficiency of skilled human workers, but their high costs have limited deployment to only a few units.

Spirit AI’s funding streak mirrors a broader trend as capital heavily concentrates on leading players in the humanoid robot space. Over the past six months, companies including X Square Robot and AI² Robotics have closed a funding round of around 1 billion yuan.

Several of highly valued startups are now eyeing the public markets. Unitree Robotics had its listing application accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 20, following a funding round in June 2025 that valued the company at 12.7 billion yuan. Other domestic competitors are also preparing for a listing on the Chinese mainland or in Hong Kong.

Contact editor Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)