On May 11th, embodied AI company Vbot Robotics announced the completion of its Pre-A funding round, raising nearly 5 billion yuan, setting a record for the largest single funding amount in the current consumer-grade embodied AI sector.
This round was jointly led by Oriental Value, Huatai Zijin, and Fosun RZ Capital, with participation from SAIC Motor's Shangqi Capital and Minghui Zhiyuan. Existing shareholders including Cathay Capital, Today Capital, Gaorong Capital, INCE Capital, BV Baidu Ventures, and Bairui Capital all increased their investments.
Simultaneously with the funding news, delivery data was announced. The company stated that its first product, the Vbot Super Robotic Dog, officially commenced deliveries on May 8th. The first batch of 500 units has completed mass production, with deliveries to over 1,500 users expected within May. Production capacity is projected to increase to over 2,500 units by June.
According to co-founder Zhao Zhelun, total orders have exceeded 8,000 units since the product launch. The dedicated production line built in cooperation with Huaqin can achieve a monthly capacity of over 4,000 units at full operation.
This indicates that within the current embodied AI industry, "mass production" is replacing "technical demos" as the key metric capturing capital's attention.
A critical industry milestone for 2026 is the delivery of tens of thousands of humanoid robots and shipments of hundreds of thousands of consumer-grade legged robots. However, most consumer-grade embodied AI companies remain in the proof-of-concept stage.
Vbot Robotics has taken the lead in establishing a closed loop encompassing product design, supply chain management, and omni-channel sales, which forms the core leverage enabling it to secure substantial funding.
It is understood that Vbot Robotics was co-founded in December 2024 by Yu Yinan, former Vice President of Horizon Robotics; Song Wei, former Chief Software Platform Architect at Horizon Robotics; and Zhao Zhelun, former Intelligent Driving Product Director at Li Auto.
Yu Yinan, a core founding member, previously led the development and deployment of Horizon Robotics' Journey series of intelligent driving products, achieving front-load mass production on a scale of millions of units.
This background signifies that the founding team possesses practical experience in taking hardware products from zero to mass production in an enterprise context, which is not common among current embodied AI startup teams.
In March 2026, Qin Hailong, former Chief Scientist at Qianli Zhijia, joined Vbot Robotics as Vice President of R&D, overseeing world models, spatial intelligence, and humanoid robot development. Currently, the company's R&D team exceeds 100 people, forming a full-stack capability closed loop from product design and structural R&D to AI algorithms, supply chain management, and omni-channel sales.
The composition of investors in this funding round is noteworthy. Among the lead investors, Oriental Value, Huatai Zijin, and Fosun RZ Capital represent mainstream financial investment institutions. Shangqi Capital, as a platform under SAIC Motor, reflects the intent of industrial capital to establish a position in this sector.
Particularly notable is the continued participation of Xu Xin, founder of Today Capital, renowned for consumer goods investments, marking her latest move in the embodied AI field. The full-scale follow-on investments from existing shareholders like Gaorong Capital, INCE Capital, and BV Baidu Ventures indicate their recognition of the team's execution pace.
To date, from seed round to Pre-A round, Vbot Robotics has completed four funding rounds in less than a year and a half, accumulating over 7 billion yuan.
However, against the backdrop of continued industry funding enthusiasm, the contradiction in the embodied AI sector where "the pace of capitalization significantly outpaces the pace of commercial implementation" persists. While fundraising capability is a positive signal for this stage, the ability to continuously absorb capital and translate it into genuine market share remains a proposition yet to be proven.
It is reported that following the initial delivery of the consumer-grade quadruped robot, Vbot Robotics has simultaneously initiated the development of a full-size humanoid robot. Core directions include body development, a world model integrating hands and feet, and an embodied AI operating system based on an Agentic OS architecture. According to Yu Yinan, a prototype of the humanoid robot is expected to debut in August this year.
The company has also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with JD.com, collaborating on channels and sales within the consumer-grade embodied AI field, with a target of one million unit sales within three years.
From an industry fundamentals perspective, data disclosed by the China Business Industry Research Institute shows that China's embodied AI market size in 2025 was approximately 915 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.4%. The institute forecasts that China's embodied AI market size will reach 1,090.4 billion yuan in 2026.
On the policy front, "embodied AI" has been included in the 2026 Government Work Report, and the first "Humanoid Robot and Embodied AI Standard System (2026 Edition)" has been officially released, providing institutional support for industrial scaling.
However, the risks facing the industry cannot be ignored.
Objectively, the nearly 5 billion yuan in funding is sufficient to support Vbot Robotics in completing the production capacity ramp-up and early market education for its first consumer-grade product, and to secure a time window for the pre-research of its humanoid robot.
But long-term commercial success will still depend on whether its robotic dog product can maintain a stable monthly sales baseline in the general consumer market after moving beyond the early adopter enthusiast group, and whether the speed of its supply chain cost optimization can outpace the patience of capital.
Amid the wave of "AI + hardware," Vbot Robotics has submitted its first mass production report, but the long-term test of production capacity and business models specific to embodied AI has only just begun.
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