Chinese robotics AI startups raise billions in new funding rounds

Beijing‑based Lightwheel secured a RMB 1 billion ($145 million) Series A++/A+++ round, creating a three‑layer data engine for robot simulation, human demonstration data and industrial evaluation. CEO Steve Xie, formerly of Cruise, NVIDIA and NIO, said the fund will help overcome the "data wall" limiting physical AI.

Shenzhen and Beijing start‑up X Square Robot closed a Series C round that values it at over $2.8 billion, drawing investors such as Alibaba, ByteDance, Meituan and Xiaomi. The company develops general‑purpose embodied AI robots that learn from real‑world interactions, using its WALL family of foundation models and a proprietary data‑pipeline to improve performance across homes, warehouses and elderly‑care settings.